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STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 


AMERICAN   SOCIAL   PROGRESS  SERIES 
EDITED  BY  SAMUEL  MC€UNE  LINDSAY,  PH.D. 


A  series  of  handbooks  for  the  student  and  general  reader, 
giving  the  results  of  the  newer  social  thought  and  of  recent 
scientific  investigations  of  the  facts  of  American  social  life  and 
institutions.  Each  volume  about  200  pages. 

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S.  N.  PATTEN,  PH.D.,  LL.D.,  University  of  Pennsylvania. 
Price  $1.00  net. 

2.  STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC   MORALITY.     By  ARTHUR 

TWINING    HADLEY,   PH.D.,   LL.D.,   President  of  Yale 
University.     Price  $1.00  net. 

8.  LEGISLATION  AND  ADMINISTRATION  FOR  SO- 
CIAL WELFARE.  By  Professor  JEREMIAH  W.  JENKS, 
PH.D.,  LL.D.,  Cornell  University.  [In  preparation. 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 
64-66  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York 


AMERICAN  SOCIAL  PROGRESS  SERIES 

STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC 
MORALITY 


BY 

AETHUR  TWINING  HADLEY, 

PRESIDENT   OF  TALK  UNIVERSITY 


THE  KENNEDY  LECTURES  FOR  1906,  IN  THE  SCHOOL  OF 

PHILANTHROPY,  CONDUCTED  BY  THE  CHARITY 

ORGANIZATION  SOCIETY  OF  THE  CITY 

OF  NEW  YORK 


THE  MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

LONDON:  MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LTD. 
1911 

Att  right*  reterved 


COPTEIGHT,    1907, 

BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  June,  1907.    Reprinted 
March,  1908 ;  June,  1911. 


J.  8.  Cashing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


PREFACE 

THE  five  chapters  of  which  this  book  is  composed 
were  delivered  as  lectures  on  the  John  S.  Kennedy 
Foundation  in  New  York  in  November  and  December, 
1906.  The  manner  of  treatment  and  choice  of  illus- 
trations show  that  they  were  originally  intended  for 
the  platform  rather  than  for  the  printed  page.  It 
has  not,  however,  been  thought  wise,  in  so  short  and 
unpretending  a  book  as  this,  to  make  any  serious 
change  in  their  form. 

Should  any  one  take  up  this  book  a  few  years  hence, 
the  author  hopes  he  may  find  that,  though  the  events 
in  the  foreground  have  changed,  the  underlying  prin- 
ciples yet  remain  of  value. 

NKW  HAVEN,  May,  1907. 


vii 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PiOB 

I.     THE  FORMATION  OF  PUBLIC  OPINION      .  .         1 

n.     THE  ETHICS  OF  TRADE                             ;  .       31 

III.  THE  ETHICS  OF  CORPORATE  MANAGEMENT  .       63 

IV.  THE  WORKINGS  OF  OUR  POLITICAL,  MACHINERY       97 
V.     THE  POLITICAL  DUTIES  OF  THE  CITIZEN  129 


CHAPTER  I 


THE   FORMATION   OF  PUBLIC   OPINION 


CHAPTER  I 

THE   FORMATION   OF  PUBLIC   OPINION 

ONE  of  the  strangest  features  in  the  life  of  the 
American   people  at  the  present  day  is  the 
contrast  between  its  standards  of  private  and 
of  public  morality. 

}  In  private  the  typical  American  citizen  bears  an 
excellent  character.  With  the  weak  he  is  courteous; 
with  the  strong,  self-respecting ;  with  all,  helpful. 
He  uses  his  powers  and  advantages  unselfishly.  He 
does  not  employ  his  strength  to  elbow  his  way  to  the 
front  through  a  crowd  of  women  and  children.  He 
does  not  employ  his  cunning  to  overreach  his  neighbors 
and  friends.  In  great  emergencies,  like  fire  or  flood  or 
railway  accident,  it  is  not  the  mean  and  selfish  side 
of  human  nature  which  comes  prominently  to  the  front 
in  the  conduct  of  our  countrymen,  but  the  large  and 
helpful  side.  We  are  glad  to  believe  that  the  heroism 
shown  at  these  times  of  crisis  is  but  a  manifestation 

[31 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC   MORALITY 

of  the  ordinary  intentions  and  ideals  of  our  American 
men  and  women,  which  they  are  showing  in  thousands  of 
little  acts  of  daily  self-sacrifice  of  which  we  never  hear. 
But  with  our  public  morals  the  case  is  different.  In 
each  of  our  two  chief  forms  of  organized  social  activity 
—  business  and  politics  —  we  have  to  record  a  different 
story.  The  man  whom  you  could  trust  to  help  a  weaker 
neighbor  will  nevertheless  go  to  all  lengths  to  hurt  a 
weaker  competitor  for  money  or  for  office.  A  man  who 
in  private  life  would  despise  snobbishness  and  servility 
of  every  kind  will  in  business  or  politics  cringe  to  the 
stronger  power  for  the  sake  of  his  own  personal  advan- 
tage. The  instinct  to  serve  others  which  we  feel  in 
our  private  relations  gives  place  to  an  instinct  to  serve 
ourselves  in  commercial  or  political  ones.  And  when 
some  special  emergency  draws  public  attention  to  the 
real  methods  which  men  are  using  and  the  real  stand- 
ards to  which  they  hold,  like  the  insurance  investiga- 
tion in  New  York  or  the  political  upheaval  in  St.  Louis, 
we  find  ourselves  confronted,  not  with  unexpected 
heights  of  self-sacrificing  heroism,  but  with  unexpected 
depths  of  selfish  deceit. 

[4] 


THE   FORMATION  OF  PUBLIC   OPINION 

lyThe  man  who  hears  the  results  of  recent  investiga- 
x  tions  is  apt  to  exclaim  against  the  depravity  of  the  men 
who  manage  our  business  or  our  politics.  This  is  a 
very  superficial  way  of  looking  at  the  matter.  If  here 
and  there  some  individual  misuses  his  money  or  his 
office,  we  are  justified  in  putting  the  blame  upon  him 
individually.  But  if  a  large  number  of  people  are 
misusing  their  money  or  their  offices,  the  fault  cannot 
be  theirs  alone.  The  community  is  a  partaker  in  that 
fault.  The  chief  trouble  lies  in  the  public  standard 
of  morals.  A  great  majority  of  the  industrial  and 
political  leaders  who  have  done  the  most  harm  are  very 
excellent  men  according  to  their  lights.  They  are  kind 
to  their  families,  true  to  their  friends,  and  ready  to 
make  almost  any  effort  to  help  those  to  whom  they 
deem  themselves  under  obligation.  Most  of  them 
would  scorn  to  tell  a  lie  except  in  the  way  of  business, 
as  the  old  proverb  runs.  If  an  investigation  shows 
them  the  real  character  of  the  things  they  have  been 
doing,  they  die  of  broken  hearts  —  not,  as  people  com- 
monly think,  because  they  are  afraid  of  going  to  jail, 
but  because  they  are  honestly  ashamed  and  repentant. 

[5] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

The  blame  for  misuse  of  industrial  or  political  power 
is,  I  repeat,  ours  just  as  much  as  theirs.  For  it  is  the 
standards  that  are  at  fault,  and  we  as  well  as  they  have 
a  share  in  making  the  standards. 

£ )  '*  What ! "  you  will  say,  "  are  we,  who  never  owned 
a  share  of  railroad  stock  in  our  lives,  to  blame  for 
railroad  rebates  ?  Are  we,  who  pay  the  prices  charged 
by  monopoly,  to  blame  for  the  abuse  of  the  power  of 
industrial  combination?"  Yes.  The  man  who  in 
his  own  grocery  store  encourages  his  clerk  to  let  the 
scales  weigh  a  little  too  heavy  for  the  customer  who 
does  not  notice  or  is  too  self-respecting  to  make  a  fuss 
about  it,  has  deprived  himself  of  the  chance  of  saying 
anything  effective  against  railroad  rebates.  The  man 
who  has  tried  to  create  an  artificial  demand  for  labor 
by  slow  work  or  unfinished  work,  or  any  other  of  the 
devices  known  to  the  trade,  has  become  a  partaker 
in  the  responsibility  for  all  the  worst  evils  for  which 
he  has  upbraided  the  great  monopolists.  Any  con- 
demnation of  trusts  on  his  part  is  a  mere  matter  of 
words.  He  is  abusing  them  for  doing  on  a  large 
scale  what  he  has  been  trying  to  do  on  a  small  scale. 

[6] 


THE  FORMATION   OF  PUBLIC   OPINION 

In  like  manner,  the  man  who  contributes  to  cam- 
paign funds  because  he  regards  such  contributions  as 
good  investments  has  deprived  himself  of  the  chance 
of  criticising  corrupt  politics.  The  man  who  in  the 
choice  of  representatives  or  advocacy  of  measures 
looks  to  his  own  interest  instead  of  the  interest  of 
the  body  politic  is  a  partaker  in  the  political  sins 
under  which  we  suffer. 

V>  The  chief  cause  of  difference  between  our  private 
and  our  public  morality  is  that  public  sentiment  is 
clear  in  one  case  and  obscure  or  self-contradictory 
in  the  other.  In  private  life  we  despise  in  ourselves 
and  our  friends  the  things  which  we  condemn  in  our 
enemies.  This  makes  our  condemnation  effective. 
In  public  matters,  whether  of  business  or  of  politics, 
our  judgment  is  too  often  that  of  the  lips  rather  than 
of  the  heart.  We  condemn  a  man  for  succeeding 
when  his  success  is  detrimental  to  us;  but  for  the 
most  part  we  have  allowed  ourselves  to  get  a  little 
money  or  a  little  political  influence  by  methods  which 
are  so  much  like  his  that  it  takes  all  the  force  out 
of  our  condemnation.  No  wrong  was  ever  stopped 

[7] 


STANDARDS   OF  PUBLIC   MORALITY 

by  the  talk  of  men  who  objected  to  that  wrong  chiefly 
because  somebody  else  got  the  benefit  of  it.  No 
legislation  ever  did  much  real  good  when  the  people 
who  made  the  laws  were  not  ready  to  apply  the  under- 
lying principles  of  those  laws  against  themselves. 

~7  JA  few  years  ago  the  legislature  of  one  of  our  south- 
western states  passed  a  most  stringent  act  punishing 
commercial  combination  by  fine  and  imprisonment; 
providing,  however,  that  nothing  in  that  law  should 
apply  to  combinations  of  cattlemen.  A  law  against 
the  stranger,  an  exception  in  favor  of  one's  self  and  one's 
friends !  Unfortunately  this  is  a  type  of  commercial 
statute  and  commercial  morality  which  is  all  too  preva- 
lent to-day. 

^  We  may  prevent  certain  specific  practices  by  statutes 
which  make  them  misdemeanors ;  but  in  so  doing  we 
have  simply  cut  off  one  way  of  reaching  an  end.  Men 
will  get  the  same  result  by  another  route.  It  is  not 
enough  to  hinder  men  from  obtaining  money  or  office 
in  certain  specified  ways.  We  must  so  shape  their 
ambitions  that  they  do  not  wish  to  obtain  money  or 
office  by  means  that  injure  the  community.  We  must 

[8] 


get  them  to  consider  public  selfishness  as  dishonorable 
a  thing  as  we  now  consider  private  selfishness.  If  a 
man  to-day  crowds  himself  out  of  a  theatre,  leaving 
behind  him  a  trail  of  bruised  women  and  children,  the 
very  newsboy  in  the  street  will  hiss  him  when  he  gets 
to  the  door.  Such  a  man  will  be  despised  by  the  public, 
and  in  his  heart  he  will  despise  himself,  for  taking  ad- 
vantage of  his  strength  to  crush  others.  But  if  a  man 
gets  money  or  office  by  analogous  processes,  the  world 
is  inclined  to  admire  the  result  and  forgive  the  means ; 
and  the  man,  instead  of  despising  himself  for  his  selfish- 
ness, applauds  himself  for  his  success.  He  applauds 
himself  because  others  are  in  their  hearts  admiring 
him ;  and  as  long  as  he  has  this  admiration  he  cares  not 
for  editorial  attacks,  or  denunciatory  sermons,  or  even 
laws  to  restrain  his  activity.  He  takes  these  things  as 
tributes  —  inconvenient  but  inevitable  tributes  —  to 
the  magnitude  of  his  own  success. 

The  thing  that  governs  us  is  public  opinion  —  not 
the  nominal  public  opinion  of  creed  or  statute  book, 
but  the  real  public  opinion  of  living  men  and  women. 
Whatever  the  intelligent  and  influential  world  regards 

[9] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

as  success,  ambitious  men  will  try  to  achieve.  What- 
ever means  the  intelligent  and  influential  world  con- 
dones in  its  work,  the  ambitious  man  will  practice  in 
his.  On  the  other  hand,  whatever  ends  the  world  re- 
gards as  dishonorable,  strong  men  will  refuse  to  pursue ; 
and  whatever  means  people  disdain  to  use  in  their  own 
interest,  the  strong  man  will  reject  and  spurn.  This 
dependence  upon  public  opinion  is  not  simply  a  present 
fact;  it  is  a  necessary  basis  of  all  free  government. 
Unless  the  strong  men  are  bound  by  public  opinion 
and  care  for  the  approval  of  their  fellow-men,  civil 
liberty  is  impossible;  people  can  only  be  held  in  their 
places  by  a  system  of  tyranny.  It  is  because  men  want 
to  do  what  others  approve,  and  because  they  despise 
themselves  unless  they  conform  their  own  conduct  in 
some  measure  to  the  standards  and  needs  of  those  about 
them,  that  constitutional  government  is  possible. 

This  common  sentiment  or  sense  of  the  community, 
of  which  each  man  is  the  trustee,  is  the  really  active 
agent  in  free  government.  Legislatures  and  courts, 
police  and  armies,  may  supplement  its  behests;  they 
never  can  take  the  place  of  them.  The  police  may 

[10] 


THE  FORMATION   OF  PUBLIC  OPINION 

occasionally  arrest  an  individual ;  the  courts  may  some- 
times punish  him;  but  they  cannot  make  a  law  sacred 
unless  the  majority  of  people  acquiesce  in  its  wisdom 
without  waiting  for  the  police  to  arrest  them  and  for 
the  courts  to  punish  them.  Legislation  may  render 
public  opinion  effective  in  some  cases  where  its  appli- 
cation would  be  obscure ;  but  legislation  which  attempts 
to  anticipate  public  opinion  instead  of  defining  it  be- 
comes a  dead  letter  or  a  laughing  stock.  The  boy  at 
school  recognizes  the  obligations  imposed  by  the  public 
opinion  of  his  fellows  far  more  clearly  and  consistently 
than  he  obeys  the  rules  imposed  by  the  master.  The 
professional  man  will  hold  to  his  code  of  professional 
ethics  after  he  has  let  all  other  ethics  go ;  for  to  forfeit 
the  opinion  of  those  with  whom  he  is  associated  is  a 
greater  evil  than  to  lose  life  or  liberty  or  chances  of 
eternal  salvation.  Once  let  public  sentiment  be  clear 
on  a  certain  point,  so  that  a  man  will  enforce  it  against 
himself  just  as  much  as  he  does  against  others,  and 
public  sentiment  can  accomplish  anything. 

But  why  is  there  this  difference  in  the  way  we  enforce 
our  standards  of  public  and  private  morals  ?     Why  do 

[11] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

we  apply  our  rules  of  private  morals  strictly  and  our 
rules  of  public  morals  loosely?  It  is  because  our  ex- 
perience in  the  one  case  has  been  much  longer  than  our 
experience  in  the  other.  Men  have  been  trying  to  live 
in  peace  and  harmony  with  those  about  them  for  so 
many  thousand  years,  that  we  know  what  is  needed  to 
keep  the  peace.  But  there  have  been  so  few  hundred 
years  since  we  began  experimenting  with  the  present 
commercial  and  industrial  system,  that  we  do  not  yet 
know  what  virtues  are  needed  for  its  maintenance. 
We  know  pretty  well  what  sort  of  duties  a  man  ought 
to  perform  toward  himself  and  toward  his  neighbor 
whom  he  can  see.  We  are  not  sure  what  sort  of  obli- 
gations he  should  recognize  toward  the  larger  world 
which  he  cannot  see. 

Centuries  of  experience  have  made  it  perfectly  ob- 
vious to  us  all  that  intemperance  is  bad,  that  cruelty 
is  bad,  and  that  breach  of  personal  trust  is  bad;  that 
a  man  should  support  his  family,  stand  by  his  friends, 
and  help  those  about  him  when  they  are  in  trouble. 
These  rules  have  become  so  well  established  that  we 
apply  them  impersonally.  We  not  only  condemn  our 

[12] 


THE  FORMATION   OF  PUBLIC   OPINION 

enemies  for  breaking  them,  but  we  condemn  our 
friends  and  ourselves  with  equal  sharpness.  In  the 
field  of  private  morals  we  have  little  difficulty  in  divid- 
ing people  into  good  and  bad.  The  good  are  those 
who  fulfil  the  obligations  and  meet  the  moral  standards 
which  public  opinion  has  set;  the  bad  are  those  who 
repudiate  the  obligations  and  fall  short  of  the  standards. 
The  ethics  of  the  situation  are  generally  clear. 

But  in  public  morals,  whether  commercial  or  political, 
the  case  is  quite  different.  The  ethics  of  the  situation 
are  not  generally  clear.  There  is  no  such  consensus 
of  public  opinion  as  to  the  obligations  which  a  man 
ought  to  assume.  Society,  as  I  said  a  moment  ago, 
has  not  had  time  to  watch  the  consequences  of  selfish- 
ness in  politics  as  it  has  watched  the  consequences  of 
selfishness  in  private  life.  In  private  matters  we  have 
a  definite  code  which  meets  certain  clearly  understood 
needs ;  and  we  can  say  of  the  man  who  fails  to  meet 
its  requirements  that  his  morals  are  bad.  In  public 
matters  our  code  is  indefinite,  and  our  understanding 
of  what  we  really  need  is  often  obscure.  Even  if  a 
man  is  doing  great  harm  to  his  fellow-men  through 

[13] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

his  blindness  to  public  wants  or  his  selfish  adminis- 
tration of  public  trusts,  we  cannot  be  quite  certain 
that  he  is  morally  bad.  His  fault  may  be  due  to 
defective  ethics  rather  than  to  bad  morals.  He  is  not 
necessarily  defying  an  obligation  which  he,  in  common 
with  all  other  men,  understands  and  recognizes;  he 
may  be  failing  to  recognize  an  obligation  because  he 
does  not  understand  it. 

We  have  no  universal  public  opinion  on  these  ques- 
tions. We  have  sections  of  public  opinion,  working 
separately  and  often  pulling  apart.  The  Tribune 
appeals  with  confidence  to  the  public  opinion  of  one 
set  of  people;  the  Post  to  the  pubh'c  opinion  of  a 
somewhat  different  set;  the  Journal  to  the  public 
opinion  of  a  set  far  different  from  either.  The  facts, 
views,  and  motives  which  are  familiar  to  the  readers 
of  one  of  these  papers  are  unfamiliar  to  the  others. 
Each  group  believes  that  its  opinion  represents  a  real 
understanding  of  the  needs  of  the  people,  and  that  the 
views  of  the  other  groups  represent  the  arguments  of 
selfish  hypocrites,  doubly  detestable  because  they  take 
the  form  of  an  appeal  to  public  interest.  In  the  face 

[14] 


THE  FORMATION   OF  PUBLIC  OPINION 

of  difficulties  and  schisms  of  this  kind,  it  sometimes 
seems  as  if  there  were  no  common  ground  to  which  to 
appeal ;  no  set  of  facts  sufficiently  known  to  all  men  to 
serve  as  a  starting-point  in  the  discussion  of  public 
affairs;  no  opportunity  for  getting  on  to  a  universal 
basis  of  sympathy  in  the  domain  of  public  morals  cor- 
responding to  that  on  which  we  stand  in  our  private 
morality. 

One  of  the  great  difficulties  which  beset  the  newspaper 
editor  when  he  tries  to  discuss  public  questions  is  the 
fact  that  most  of  his  readers  have  a  strong  pecuniary 
or  personal  interest  in  having  them  decided  in  some 
particular  way.  The  man  who  owes  money  likes  all 
the  arguments  in  favor  of  a  depreciating  currency,  and 
is  suspicious  of  those  on  the  other  side.  With  the  man 
who  has  money  due  him  the  case  is  reversed.  The 
man  who  employs  labor  feels  the  need  of  giving  the  larg- 
est amount  of  control  to  him  who  risks  his  capital. 
The  arguments  in  favor  of  the  rights  of  the  capitalist 
employers  seem  to  him  strong ;  all  efforts  to  limit  those 
rights  savor  of  immorality.  The  laborer,  on  the  con- 
trary, who  works  for  another  man,  feels  that  he,  in 

[15] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

giving  his  effort  and  perhaps  risking  his  life,  has  far 
more  to  do  with  the  product  than  the  man  who  has 
simply  invested  his  money.  He  looks  with  favor  at 
every  argument  concerning  the  rights  of  labor,  and  with 
disfavor  at  any  argument  or  precedent  which  seems  to 
support  the  claims  of  capital.  If  an  editor  wishes  to 
make  his  paper  popular  with  a  certain  class,  he  lays  stress 
on  the  arguments  which  that  class  likes  and  feeds  them 
with  the  facts  which  they  want  to  believe.  His  readers 
gradually  get  into  a  position  where  their  prepossessions 
have  been  strengthened  until  they  become  prejudices, 
and  where  misinformation  has  been  added  to  prejudice 
until  it  becomes  almost  irremovable. 

There  are  right  ways  and  wrong  ways  of  getting  at 
economic  truth.  If  we  start  from  discussion  of  those 
present-day  problems  where  people  are  most  prejudiced, 
I  think  we  are  adopting  the  wrong  way.  A  few  years 
ago,  when  I  was  receiving  final  instructions  for  a  some- 
what delicate  negotiation,  I  said  to  my  chief,  "If  the 
issue  is  forced  upon  us,  there  is,  I  think,  nothing  to  do 
but  to  tell  the  truth ; "  and  my  chief,  with  the  wisdom 
born  of  many  years'  experience,  replied,  "  Even  then,  not 

[16] 


THE  FORMATION   OF  PUBLIC   OPINION 

butt  end  foremost."  As  long  as  we  present  truths  con- 
cerning public  policy  butt  end  foremost  to  people  who 
have  an  interest  in  not  accepting  them,  we  shall  never 
carry  conviction  with  us.  But  if  we  start  from  past 
history  and  study  the  development  of  the  various  rights 
and  usages,  we  have  a  far  better  chance  of  arriving  at  a 
common  understanding.  People  can  look  at  the  con- 
tests of  past  generations  more  dispassionately  than  at 
their  own;  and  they  are  more  ready  to  accept  a  legal 
or  moral  principle  which  bears  a  little  hard  upon  their 
own  interests  if  they  see  that  it  resulted  from  public 
necessities  in  the  past  than  if  they  think  it  was  specially 
trumped  up  for  the  occasion  by  some  personal  enemy 
of  their  own.  I  may  be  oversanguine  in  my  confidence 
in  what  this  historical  study  will  do ;  but  I  have  gener- 
ally observed  that  when  a  man  sees  that  a  measure  has 
been  framed  in  the  public  interest  he  accepts  its  con- 
sequences, even  when  they  hurt  him  personally;  and 
that  if  he  once  believes  that  a  general  rule  is  a  general 
rule  and  not  a  piece  of  class  legislation  directed  against 
him  and  his  friends,  he  will  lend  his  aid  in  its  enforce- 
ment. This  way  of  looking  at  things  is  known  as  public 
c  [17] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

spirit;  and  it  is  because  the  American  people  has,  at 
the  bottom,  a  great  deal  of  this  public  spirit,  that  it 
has  been  able  to  enjoy  freedom  for  more  than  a  century. 
If  here  or  there  this  spirit  to-day  seems  dormant,  I 
believe  that  this  is  due  more  to  the  lack  of  clear  under- 
standing of  the  problems  at  issue  than  to  any  deteriora- 
tion in  our  moral  fibre  which  unfits  us  for  the  exercise 
of  freedom. 

Therefore,  when  one  man  makes  liberty  his  watch- 
word, and  another  democracy,  and  a  third  relies  on 
constitutional  safeguards;  and  when  the  three  men, 
starting  with  these  different  premises  of  political  ethics, 
reach  diverse  and  irreconcilable  conclusions;  —  the 
only  way  of  bringing  them  together  is  to  trace  the  origin 
of  liberty  and  of  democracy  and  of  constitutional  safe- 
guards. When  we  look  at  the  matter  in  this  way,  we 
shall  see  that  not  one  of  the  three  represents  a  funda- 
mental principle  of  morals  or  politics;  that  each  has 
been  adopted  and  accepted  as  a  means  to  the  strength 
and  progress  of  the  community,  rather  than  as  an  end 
of  strength  and  progress;  that  when  any  one  of  the 
three  is  thus  made  an  end  instead  of  a  means,  or  re- 

[18] 


THE   FORMATION   OF  PUBLIC   OPINION 

garded  as  a  postulate  of  right  thinking  instead  of  an 
incident  of  right  living,  it  fails  of  the  very  purpose  for 
which  it  exists. 

Five  hundred  years  ago  our  ancestors  had  a  coherent 
and  well-defined  system  of  public  opinion  on  public 
matters  as  well  as  private  ones.  It  was  not  what  we 
should  call  a  good  system;  but,  such  as  it  was,  it 
commanded  almost  universal  acceptance.  The  public 
opinion  of  those  ages  held  that  each  man  was  born  to 
fill  a  certain  niche  or  place  in  society.  His  duties  as  a 
member  of  the  body  politic  were  sharply  defined  for 
him  by  a  series  of  traditions.  He  was  to  take  the  same 
trade  which  his  father  had  before  him;  to  make  such 
goods  and  charge  such  prices  as  were  fixed  by  tradition 
and  enforced  by  the  magistrates ;  to  perform  such  part  in 
public  affairs,  and  only  such  part,  as  belonged  to  his 
station.  At  all  points  which  the  law  could  reach  he  was 
closely  hedged  about;  and  where  the  law  could  not 
reach  him,  public  sentiment  compelled  him  to  accept 
the  dictates  of  the  Church  as  to  what  he  should  think 
and  believe.  Each  man  was  but  one  very  small  wheel 

[19] 


in  a  large  machine.  Unless  that  wheel  ran  as  had  been 
ordered,  men  thought  that  the  whole  machine  would 
fall  out  of  gear.  This  was  the  essence  of  the  feudal 
system.  The  codes  of  law  with  which  we  identify 
that  system  were  but  its  externals.  The  real  heart 
was  found  in  its  dominant  public  opinion,  that  kept  each 
man  in  the  place  where  he  was  born  and  set  rules  for 
all  his  actions  as  a  member  of  an  industrial  and  political 
community. 

But  there  came  a  time  when  people  ceased  to  be 
content  with  the  dictates  of  this  inherited  opinion  —  a 
time  when  they  wanted  to  make  their  own  place  in 
society,  and  serve  the  community  in  their  own  way 
instead  of  the  way  which  tradition  prescribed.  Such 
men  were  at  first  treated  as  heretics  and  reprobates. 
But  the  communities  which  gave  ear  to  the  new  doctrines 
and  tolerated  the  new  methods  prospered,  while  those 
which  altogether  strove  to  repress  them  fell  behind. 
The  new  methods  began  to  displace  the  old  by  a  process 
of  natural  selection. 

At  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century  two  events  occurred 
which  gave  the  death-blow  to  the  old  system  of  author- 

[20] 


THE  FORMATION   OF  PUBLIC   OPINION 

ity,  and  paved  the  way  for  the  development  of  the  new 
system  of  liberty.  One  was  the  invention  of  printing; 
the  other  was  the  discovery  of  America.  The  former 
gave  every  man  who  had  new  truth  to  preach  an  op- 
portunity to  spread  it  abroad,  whether  the  authorities 
liked  it  or  not.  The  latter  gave  to  every  man  who  had 
new  modes  of  action  to  suggest  a  chance  to  try  those 
modes  on  a  large  scale,  free  of  the  interference  which  he 
would  have  had  at  home.  Slowly  but  surely  the  printed 
book  had  its  influence  in  unsettling  old  methods  of 
thought;  slowly  but  surely  the  New  World  experi- 
ments had  their  influence  in  readjusting  and  reorganiz- 
ing Old  World  methods.  There  is  no  time  to  trace  in 
detail  the  history  of  this  change.  Suffice  it  to  say  that 
in  the  course  of  four  centuries  we  passed  from  a  system 
of  status,  wherein  each  man  was  born  into  a  set  of  rights 
and  obligations  which  he  could  not  change,  to  a  system 
of  liberty  under  which  each  man  was  encouraged  to 
serve  society  in  his  own  way  for  better  or  for  worse. 

Speaking  broadly,  there  is  no  doubt  that  this  system 
has  justified  itself.  "  It  reposes,"  to  quote  the  admirable 
words  of  John  Morley,  "on  no  principle  of  abstract 

[21] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC   MORALITY 

right,  but  on  principles  of  utility  and  experience.  Mr. 
Carlyle,  and  one  or  two  rhetorical  imitators,  poured 
malediction  on  the  many-headed  populace,  and  with  a 
rather  pitiful  impatience  insisted  that  the  only  hope 
for  men  lay  in  their  finding  and  obeying  a  strong  man, 
a  king,  a  hero,  a  dictator.  How  he  was  to  be  found, 
neither  the  master  nor  his  still  angrier  and  more  impa- 
tient mimics  could  ever  tell  us. 

"Now  Mr.  Mill's  doctrine  [of  liberty]  laid  down  the 
main  condition  of  finding  your  hero;  namely,  that  all 
ways  should  be  left  open  to  him,  because  no  man,  nor 
majority  of  men,  could  possibly  tell  by  which  of  these 
ways  their  deliverers  were  from  time  to  time  destined  to 
present  themselves.  Wits  have  caricatured  all  this,  by 
asking  us  whether  by  encouraging  the  tares  to  grow, 
you  give  the  wheat  a  better  chance.  This  is  as  mislead- 
ing as  such  metaphors  usually  are.  The  doctrine  of 
liberty  rests  on  a  faith  drawn  from  the  observation  of 
human  progress,  that  though  we  know  wheat  to  be 
serviceable  and  tares  to  be  worthless,  yet  there  are  in 
the  great  seed-plot  of  human  nature  a  thousand  rudi- 
mentary germs,  not  wheat  and  not  tares,  of  whose 


THE  FORMATION  OF  PUBLIC   OPINION 

properties  we  have  not  had  a  fair  opportunity  of  assur- 
ing ourselves.  If  you  are  too  eager  to  pluck  up  the 
tares,  you  are  very  likely  to  pluck  up  with  them  these 
untried  possibilities  of  human  excellence,  and  you  are, 
moreover,  very  likely  to  injure  the  growing  wheat  as 
well.  The  demonstration  of  this  lies  in  the  recorded 
experience  of  mankind." 

This  is  the  true  doctrine  of  liberty.  But  there  are  a 
great  many  people  who,  seeing  the  truth  of  this  doctrine, 
have  taken  a  further  step  that  converts  its  truth  into 
falsehood;  who  believe  that  because  we  have  found  it 
wise  to  let  individuals  serve  society  in  their  own  way, 
we  may  therefore  let  them  have  their  own  way  in  every- 
thing, with  the  assurance  that  they  will  serve  society 
in  spite  of  themselves;  that  the  selfishness  of  all  men, 
pulling  apart  and  working  for  their  own  interest,  can 
by  some  occult  process  be  trusted  to  promote  the  com- 
mon interest.  For  this  extreme  theory  there  is  not  one 
shadow  of  justification  in  human  history.  But  in  these 
days  true  and  false  doctrines  of  liberty  are  so  inter- 
woven that  the  men  who  see  the  good  of  the  right  kind 
of  liberty  are  prone  to  shut  their  eyes  to  the  evils  of  the 

[23] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC   MORALITY 

wrong  kind ;  while  those  who  see  the  evils  of  the  wrong 
kind  of  liberty  are  equally  blind  to  the  inestimably 
great  good  which  the  right  kind  of  liberty  accomplishes. 
To  kings  and  nobles  and  prelates,  and  other  bene- 
ficiaries of  the  feudal  system,  the  doctrine  of  liberty  in 
its  true  form,  no  less  than  in  its  false  one,  was  a  very 
unwelcome  thing.  As  a  matter  of  course,  they  resisted 
it.  In  some  countries,  notably  in  Spain,  they  were  suc- 
cessful, and  succeeded  in  checking  the  growth  of  lib- 
erty at  the  loss  of  national  vitality  and  national  progress. 
But  in  England,  in  France,  and  in  Germany,  the  forces 
on  the  two  sides  were  more  evenly  balanced.  There 
was  a  conflict  which  lasted  for  centuries  between  the 
feudal  governments  on  the  one  hand  and  the  champions 
of  liberty  on  the  other.  Out  of  the  resistance  of  these 
governments  to  liberty  grew  the  modern  system  of 
democracy.  The  people  as  a  body  tried  to  take  the 
business  of  governing  into  their  own  hands,  as  a  means 
of  preserving  liberty  against  the  encroachment  of 
privileged  classes.  The  fundamental  theory  of  this 
democratic  movement  was  that  all  just  government  was 
based  on  the  consent  of  the  governed. 

[24] 


THE  FORMATION  OF  PUBLIC   OPINION 

This  underlying  theory  of  democracy  was  as  sound 
as  the  underlying  theory  of  liberty.  Unfortunately  it 
was  just  as  easily  subject  to  perversion.  Not  content 
with  saying  that  all  just  government  was  based  on  the 
consent  of  the  governed,  the  enthusiastic  advocates  of 
democracy  held  that  if  you  could  only  find  what  a 
majority  of  the  governed  wanted,  you  could  wisely 
incorporate  it  into  law.  Never  was  there  a  greater 
practical  error.  Public  law,  to  be  effective,  requires 
much  more  than  the  majority  to  support  it.  It  requires 
general  acquiescence.  To  leave  the  minority  at  the 
mercy  of  the  whims  of  the  majority  does  not  conduce 
to  law  or  good  government  or  justice  between  man 
and  man.  Even  Rousseau,  the  leading  apostle  of 
modern  democracy,  saw  this  most  clearly.  He  said 
in  substance:  "A  majority  of  the  people  is  not  the 
people,  and  never  can  be.  We  take  a  majority  vote 
simply  as  the  best  available  means  of  ascertaining  the 
real  wishes  of  the  people  in  cases  when  it  becomes 
necessary  to  do  so."  But  Rousseau's  followers,  who 
believed  in  the  infallibility  of  majorities,  did  not  stop 
short  in  the  application  of  their  theory  until  they  had 

[25] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

produced  the  helpless  anarchy  which  preceded  the 
adoption  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  or 
the  reign  of  terror  which  preceded  the  reestablishment 
of  a  strong  personal  government  in  France.  For  the 
principles  of  extreme  democracy  and  of  extreme  liberty, 
though  often  proclaimed  by  the  same  persons,  are  in- 
consistent in  practice  and  in  theory.  The  right  of  each 
man  to  consult  his  own  interests  and  the  right  of  a 
majority  of  men  to  sacrifice  the  interests  of  the  minority 
are  absolutely  irreconcilable  with  one  another. 

The  people  who  were  charged  with  the  practical 
work  of  governing  democratic  countries  saw  this  dif- 
ficulty; and  they  tried  to  provide  against  it  by  the 
adoption  of  constitutions.  These  constitutions  erected 
traditional  or  vested  rights  as  a  bar  against  the  excesses 
of  individual  liberty  on  the  one  hand;  and,  still  more 
important,  against  the  excesses  of  unrestricted  powers 
of  the  majority  on  the  other.  The  Constitution  of  the 
United  States  is  perhaps  the  best  example  of  a  practical 
instrument  of  this  kind.  The  preamble  indeed  asserts 
unqualified  rights  to  liberty  and  unqualified  adherence 
to  the  principles  of  democracy;  but  the  instrument 

[26] 


THE   FORMATION   OF  PUBLIC  OPINION 

itself  is  occupied  with  establishing  safeguards  for  prop- 
erty and  contract  against  the  violence  of  liberty,  and  for 
orderly  development  of  the  law  against  the  disorderly 
demands  of  majorities.  The  success  of  our  Constitution 
has  been  so  great  that  a  very  considerable  proportion 
of  our  people  make  it  the  starting-point  of  their  reason- 
ing on  industrial  and  political  morals.  But  the  theory 
of  the  sovereignty  of  the  Constitution  is  in  effect  a  denial 
of  the  principles  both  of  liberty  and  of  democracy. 
There  is  nothing  self-evident  or  axiomatic  about  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States.  It  was  adopted 
because  the  public  opinion  of  Americans  at  the  end 
of  the  eighteenth  century  acquiesced  in  the  practical 
wisdom  of  its  provisions.  Those  who  take  their  stand 
on  the  letter  of  these  provisions  to-day  are  bound  to  take 
pains  to  keep  public  opinion  of  the  twentieth  century 
behind  them  —  not  simply  their  own  public  opinion 
and  that  of  their  friends,  but  of  the  great  body  of  the 
governed  on  whose  consent  constitutional  government 
must  rest. 

Liberty,  democracy,  and  constitutional  government 
are  each  in  their  place  invaluable  means  to  the  public 

[27] 


STANDARDS   OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

interest.  Liberty  is  essential  to  progress,  democracy 
is  needed  to  prevent  revolution,  constitutional  govern- 
ment is  requisite  for  that  continuity  and  orderliness 
of  living  without  which  no  worthy  life  is  possible.  But 
when  any  one  of  these  principles  is  made  not  a  means 
but  an  end  which  justifies  its  use  in  the  interests  of  a 
class,  instead  of  the  general  interests  of  society,  it 
becomes  a  menace  instead  of  a  protection.  Liberty  is 
good  as  a  means  of  allowing  each  man  to  serve  society 
in  his  own  way ;  it  is  bad  when  it  is  used  as  a  means  of 
allowing  him  to  serve  himself  at  the  expense  of  society. 
Democracy  is  right  when  used  as  a  means  of  keeping 
the  government  in  touch  with  public  opinion;  it  is 
wrong  when  it  encourages  a  temporary  majority  to  say 
that  their  vote,  based  on  insufficient  information  or 
animated  by  selfish  motives,  can  be  identified  with  public 
opinion  concerning  what  is  best  for  society  as  a  whole. 
Constitutional  safeguards  are  absolutely  necessary  to 
make  any  measure  of  liberty  or  democracy  possible; 
but  when  they  are  used  to  protect  the  liberties  of  a 
class  bent  on  its  own  interest  rather  than  on  the  general 

interest  of  society,  they  cease  to  be  a  safeguard  and 

[28] 


THE  FORMATION   OF  PUBLIC   OPINION 

become  a  source  of  peril.  Applied  unselfishly  and  with 
primary  regard  for  the  public  interest,  liberty,  democ- 
racy, and  constitutional  law  work  to  a  common  end. 
Applied  selfishly,  for  the  benefit  of  different  classes, 
they  are  inconsistent  in  their  results ;  and  any  one  of  the 
three  thus  selfishly  applied  may  become  dangerous  to  the 
stability  of  social  order. 


[29] 


CHAPTER  II 


THE  ETHICS  OF  TRADE 


CHAPTER  II 

THE   ETHICS  OF  TRADE 

IS  a  man  justified  in  buying  as  cheap  as  he  can, 
and  selling  as  dear  as  he  can?     This  double 
question  is  the  fundamental  one  in  the  ethics  of 
trade.     If  we  say  yes,  how  can  we  excuse  the  evils 
which  result  when  we  pay  some  people  less  than  a  liv- 
ing wage  for  the  things  that  they  produce,  and  give 
others  extraordinary  profits  on  things  which  have  cost 
them  little  ?     If  we  say  no,  where  are  we  to  draw  the 
line  between  just  profits  and  unjust  profits  in  trade  ? 

Different  ages  have  answered  this  question  quite 
differently.  The  ancients  had  no  trouble  at  all  with  it. 
They  said,  "No,  he  is  not  justified  either  in  buying 
cheap  or  in  selling  dear."  The  ancients  not  only  gave 
this  answer,  but  they  went  to  the  logical  conclusion. 
They  said :  "  All  trade  is  a  bad  thing.  It  is  robbery. 
In  fact,  it  is  a  particularly  cowardly  mode  of  robbery." 
D  [33] 


STANDARDS   OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

According  to  the  ancient  view,  the  man  who  went  out 
and  held  up  a  railroad  train  was  a  decidedly  more 
respectable  man  morally  than  the  man  who  made 
profit  out  of  buying  and  selling  the  stocks  of  the  road. 
For  the  man  who  held  up  the  train  risked  his  life  in 
a  fair  fight,  and  the  people  who  let  him  steal  their  money 
were  cowards;  while  the  man  who  bought  the  stock 
of  the  road  cheap  and  sold  it  dear  risked  nothing,  and 
very  likely  took  away  the  money  of  respectable  people 
who  trusted  him.  Holding,  as  Aristotle  did,  that  trade 
was  essentially  base,  he  and  his  followers  had  no  dif- 
ficulty in  condemning  the  profits  of  trade. 

But  however  strongly  the  ancients  might  have  urged 
this  view  in  theory,  they  never  were  able  to  get  it  carried 
out  in  practice.  Trade  was  a  necessity,  whether  they 
liked  it  or  not.  The  fact  that  the  moralists  stigmatized 
it  as  bad  only  prevented  them  from  having  the  influence 
which  they  otherwise  might  have  had  on  the  way  that  it 
was  conducted.  Their  position  was  like  that  of  the  chap- 
lain of  the  Spanish  regiment  to  which  Captain  Dugald 
Dalgetty  was  attached;  who,  when  the  captain  in- 
quired of  him  whether  he  might  or  might  not  lawfully 

[34] 


THE  ETHICS   OF  TRADE 

do  certain  things,  responded  (after  the  third  glass  of 
wine)  that  as  he  was  bound  to  be  damned  as  a  heretic 
anyway  a  few  sins  more  or  less  didn't  seem  to  him  to 
be  a  matter  of  any  particular  importance.  The  writings 
of  the  Roman  lawyers  frankly  assume  that  trade  is  and 
must  be  independent  of  moral  considerations.  Paulus, 
for  instance,  states  explicitly  this  fundamental  prin- 
ciple of  the  civil  law :  "  In  buying  and  selling  a  man  has 
a  natural  right  to  purchase  for  a  small  price  that  which 
is  really  more  valuable,  and  to  sell  at  a  high  price  that 
which  is  less  valuable,  and  for  either  to  overreach  the 
other" 

Until  the  tenth  or  eleventh  century  the  extreme  views 
of  the  moralists  on  the  one  hand  and  the  lawyers  on  the 
other  were  maintained  side  by  side  in  irreconcilable 
shape.  But  in  the  later  Middle  Ages  there  was  at  least 
an  approach  toward  reconciliation.  The  moralists 
of  that  period,  of  whom  Thomas  Aquinas  was  the  great 
leader,  recognized  that  trade  was  a  necessary  thing  and 
that  its  profits  were  therefore  to  a  certain  extent  legit- 
imate. They  said  that  the  gain  itself  was  not  bad, 
but  the  covetousness  or  unlimited  desire  to  gain;  and 

[35] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

they  attempted  to  arrange  a  system  of  ethics  under  which 
just  and  moderate  gains  could  be  distinguished  from  un- 
just or  immoderate  ones.  They  held  that  every  article 
had  its  value  or  proper  price,  represented  in  a  general 
way  by  the  amount  of  labor  which  had  been  involved 
in  its  production.  So  long  as  a  trader  was  content  with 
a  price  of  this  kind,  he  rendered  a  valuable  service 
to  society  by  giving  it  the  articles  it  wanted  in  the  places 
and  times  where  they  were  needed ;  and  he  might  prop- 
erly charge  for  that  service  as  an  essential  element 
in  the  just  price  of  the  article.  Some  of  the  moralists 
went  even  farther,  and  said  that  in  case  of  special 
scarcity  of  an  article  and  exceptional  need  for  its  use, 
the  trader  might  be  held  to  have  performed  a  service 
of  exceptional  value;  and  as  long  as  he  did  not  buy 
with  the  intention  of  making  these  exorbitant  profits 
he  might  legitimately  avail  himself  of  them  when  they 
came  through  the  gift  of  Providence.  This  last  con- 
cession was,  however,  exceptional.  Most  of  the  medi- 
aeval moralists  held  that  it  was  as  bad  to  take  advan- 
tage of  a  scarcity  as  it  was  to  deceive  the  public  as  to  the 
kind  of  goods  which  were  being  sold. 

[36] 


THE  ETHICS  OF  TRADE 

This  idea  that  each  article  has  a  value  or  just  price, 
based  upon  its  cost  of  production,  and  that  trade  is 
moral  or  immoral  according  as  the  trader  bases  his 
charge  upon  this  cost,  was  at  one  time  quite  universal, 
and  is  held  by  many  persons  even  at  the  present  day. 
It  is  the  fundamental  principle  of  Marx's  book  on 
Capital,  the  economic  Bible  of  the  socialist.  But  the 
attempt  to  carry  this  theory  out  in  practice,  to  make  it  a 
workable  standard  for  the  conduct  of  trade  instead  of 
a  somewhat  vague  economic  ideal,  has  been  attended 
with  much  difficulty. 

To  begin  with,  while  it  makes  provision  against 
extortionate  profits  by  the  trader  on  some  articles,  it 
does  not  say  how  he  is  to  be  protected  against  losses  on 
others.  What  will  happen  if  buyers  are  not  prepared 
to  pay  a  price  for  the  article  which  covers  the  cost  of 
production  ?  You  cannot  compel  a  man  to  purchase 
when  he  would  rather  go  without  the  article  than  pay 
the  price  charged.  You  cannot  compel  the  trader  to 
leave  the  goods  unsold  on  his  shelves  because  the  just 
price  is  not  forthcoming.  You  must  let  him  sell  at  a 
loss.  But  if  he  sells  some  things  at  a  loss  and  is  only 

[37] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC   MORALITY 

allowed  a  fair  profit  on  others,  his  business  in  general 
is  a  losing  one.  He  must  be  allowed  to  make  extra 
charges  on  the  things  that  the  public  will  buy,  to 
make  up  for  his  failures  on  the  things  the  public  will 
not  buy. 

But  there  is  a  deeper  practical  difficulty  than  this. 
The  attempt  to  prohibit  a  trader  from  selling  an  article 
for  more  than  it  cost  may  become  disadvantageous  to 
society  as  a  whole.  Take  a  concrete  case,  which  was 
frequently  occurring  in  mediaeval  communities.  There 
is  a  scarcity  of  wheat  and  a  deficiency  in  the  bread 
supply.  Those  who  have  the  wheat  or  the  bread  to  sell 
are  anxious  to  put  the  price  up.  They  are  not  allowed 
to  do  it.  The  Church  threatens  them  with  everlasting 
penalties  in  the  next  world;  and,  more  immediate  if 
not  more  important,  the  magistrates  threaten  to  cut 
off  their  ears  in  this.  Of  course  the  price  stays  where 
it  was.  No  man  is  going  to  imperil  his  soul's  salvation 
and  his  ears  at  the  same  time.  The  consequence  is 
that  as  long  as  the  supply  lasts  the  consumption  of 
bread  goes  on  at  the  same  rate  as  before.  Then  there 

is  a  sudden  and  appalling  famine  in  which  whole  villages 

[38] 


THE   ETHICS  OF  TRADE 

are  desolated.  Contrast  the  working  of  the  modern 
principle,  of  letting  people  charge  whatever  they  can 
get.  Those  who  own  the  food  supplies  raise  their 
prices  as  soon  as  they  see  the  scarcity  threatening.  This 
enhancement  of  price  causes  people  to  be  more  eco- 
nomical in  the  use  of  bread,  so  that  the  old  supply  lasts 
longer.  It  also  gives  people  a  motive  to  arrange  for 
the  importation  of  wheat  from  other  markets  in  time 
to  prevent  the  most  acute  forms  of  famine.  Of  course 
there  is  some  hardship.  The  poor  feel  the  increased 
price  of  bread  acutely;  and  when  they  see  that  this 
increased  price  goes  to  swell  the  profits  of  traders  who 
had  more  money  than  the  consumers  to  begin  with, 
they  are  most  jealous  of  the  injustice.  But  the  moder- 
ate hardship  to  the  consumer  when  the  price  of  bread 
begins  to  rise  prevents  the  awful  and  appalling  loss  which 
he  would  suffer  in  seeing  his  children  die  before  his 
eyes  if  all  the  bread  in  the  community  were  used  up; 
and  the  extra  profit  to  the  seller  is  a  small  price  for  the 
public  to  pay  if  the  seller  thereby  is  stimulated  to  bring 
in  additional  supplies  before  the  acute  stage  of  famine 

is  reached. 

[39] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

Whatever  may  be  thought  of  the  old  legal  theory  of  a 
just  price,  the  fact  remains  that  almost  every  attempt 
to  enforce  that  theory  has  intensified  the  evils  it  was 
intended  to  prevent.  There  are  many  men  still  engaged 
in  business  who  can  remember  the  days  in  1864  when 
Congress  undertook  to  prevent  speculators  from  putting 
up  the  price  of  gold;  with  the  result  that  the  price  of 
gold  in  two  weeks  went  up  to  a  height  hitherto  un- 
dreamed of,  and  that  as  much  harm  was  inflicted  on  the 
Union  cause  as  would  have  resulted  from  the  loss  of  half 
a  dozen  pitched  battles.  For  high  prices  and  abnormal 
profits  in  a  particular  line  are  not  a  cause  of  scarcity. 
They  are  a  symptom  of  scarcity;  and  the  man  who 
attempts  to  treat  the  disease  by  repressing  the  symptom 
manifests  but  little  knowledge  of  the  organization  with 
which  he  is  dealing. 

It  is  to  the  credit  of  the  English  judges  that  they  saw 
this  truth.  They  worked  out  the  true  way  to  deal  with 
the  evils  of  high  prices.  Not  by  declaiming  against  the 
profits  of  trade  as  unjust,  but  by  encouraging  more 
traders  to  come  in  and  cut  down  those  profits,  was 
society  to  be  supplied  with  what  it  needed  at  reasonable 

[40] 


THE  ETHICS  OF  TRADE 

rates.  Where  no  such  increase  of  supply  or  outside 
competition  could  be  hoped  for,  then  the  courts  would 
step  in  and  fix  a  just  price.  More  than  two  hundred 
years  ago  Lord  Hale,  in  his  treatise  De  Portibus  Maris, 
laid  down  the  true  economic  principle  of  rate  regulation, 
as  understood  by  the  English  courts.  His  position  was 
in  substance  this.  Where  one  man  or  one  company 
has  the  sole  right  of  wharfage  or  cranage  in  a  town, 
then  the  law  will  tell  what  he  may  justly  or  unjustly 
charge;  and  where  for  any  other  reason  there  may 
be  but  one  wharf  or  one  crane  available  for  the  people 
of  the  town,  the  same  reason  for  regulation  will  hold 
good.  But  where  other  wharves  can  be  built  or  other 
cranes  set  up,  this  fact  provides  a  more  efficient  means 
of  control  than  any  law  possibly  could.  Is  there  scarcity 
of  wharf  accommodations  ?  Make  it  profitable  for 
a  competitor  to  supply  such  accommodations,  and  you 
have  the  surest  guarantee  that  the  deficiency  will  be 
made  good.  Does  the  owner  of  a  wharf  try  to  make 
extortionate  profits  ?  The  quicker  will  those  profits 
be  cut  down  by  some  one  else  on  account  of  his  short- 
sightedness. If  you  fix  an  arbitrary  price,  there  may 

[41] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

be  a  permanent  scarcity,  where  some  of  those  who  most 
want  a  thing  will  not  get  it  at  all.  If  you  let  the  price 
fix  itself,  the  men  who  want  it  most  get  the  thing  for 
the  moment,  while  the  producers  who  charge  unfair 
profits  soon  find  the  price  reduced  to  the  level  of  cost 
of  production  by  the  competition  of  others  who  enter 
the  same  line  of  business. 

This  is  the  common  law  doctrine  of  competition. 
It  is  usually  identified  with  the  name  of  Adam  Smith. 
Adam  Smith  did  great  service  in  describing  its  effects 
upon  the  wealth  of  the  nation  as  a  whole.  But  the 
doctrine  had  gradually  grown  up  under  the  sure  touch 
of  great  jurists  before  Adam  Smith  was  ever  heard  of. 
He  did  but  codify  the  tTieory  of  value  which  they  had 
created. 

The  results  of  applying  Adam  Smith's  theory  of 
trade  were  so  much  better  than  those  which  had  fol- 
lowed from  the  mediseval  theory  that  the  practical  men 
of  the  nineteenth  century  accepted  his  views  quite  un- 
•  reservedly.  Instead  of  saying  that  a  just  price  was 
one  which  conformed  to  the  cost  of  production,  they 

said  that  a  just  price  was  one  which  was  obtained  under 

[42] 


THE   ETHICS   OF  TRADE 

fair  competition  in  an  open  market.  The  competition 
of  producers  prevented  it  from  getting  too  high;  the 
competition  of  consumers  prevented  it  from  getting  too 
low.  The  net  result  was  a  price  that  better  met  the 
necessities  of  society  than  any  other;  and  the  trader, 
as  long  as  his  actions  were  fair  and  above  board,  did 
a  public  service  by  producing  this  competitive  market 
price  which  fully  warranted  him  in  pocketing  any  profits 
he  could  get.  In  the  eyes  of  those  who  held  this  view, 
any  price  which  could  be  thus  obtained,  without  fraud 
or  concealment,  was  of  itself  and  in  itself  a  just  price. 
It  became  a  principle  of  the  nineteenth-century  trade 
ethics  that  producers,  traders,  and  consumers,  in  trying 
to  serve  themselves  intelligently  and  openly,  served 
society  also;  or,  in  the  words  of  General  Walker,  that 
in  securing  the  best  market  for  himself  a  man  provided 
the  best  market  for  others.  And  the  adoption  of  this 
ethical  principle  has  had  a  bearing  and  a  result  quite 
outside  of  the  limits  of  trade.  A  great  many  people  to- 
day hold  that  under  our  present  system  of  government 
and  with  our  present  standard  of  intelligence,  a  man 
who  in  any  field  of  human  activity  serves  himself  in  an 

[43] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

open  and  straightforward  manner  is  thereby  serving 
others;  that  enlightened  selfishness  dictates  nearly  or 
quite  the  same  course  of  conduct  which  would  result 
from  enlightened  unselfishness;  that  rational  egoism 
produces  as  high  a  standard  of  general  morality  as  we 
can  expect  to  get. 

During  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  it 
seemed  as  if  these  views  were  being  justified  —  in 
trade  at  any  rate,  if  not  in  other  fields  of  human  activity. 
During  this  period  many  thoughtful  people  were  quite 
ready  to  accept  competitive  ethics  as  a  solution  of  most 
of  our  commercial  problems.  But  as  the  years  have 
gone  on  it  has  become  evident  that  something  more  is 
needed.  Competition  is  a  good  medicine  for  some  dis- 
eases ;  but  it  certainly  falls  short  of  being  a  panacea 
for  all.  As  time  has  gone  on  the  opponents  of  com- 
petition have  become  more  numerous,  and  are  express- 
ing their  ideas  more  loudly  and  more  definitely. 

Their  first  charge  is  that  modern  trade,  in  its  suc- 
cessful and  brilliant  forms,  does  not  represent  any  real 
effort  to  meet  public  needs.  They  say  that  it  is  for  the 

most  part  mere  speculation.     It  either  ignores  public 

[44] 


THE  ETHICS  OF  TRADE 

wants,  in  which  case  it  is  only  gambling ;  or  it  antago- 
nizes those  wants  by  efforts  to  manipulate  the  market, 
in  which  case  it  is  conspiracy  to  rob  the  people.  Modern 
trade  ethics,  they  say,  is  no  longer  content  with  as- 
serting a  man's  right  to  buy  what  he  wants  as  cheaply 
as  possible,  or  sell  what  he  has  as  dearly  as  possible ; 
it  encourages  a  man  to  buy  what  he  does  not  want, 
or  sell  what  he  does  not  possess.  Profits  from  trans- 
actions of  this  kind  they  consider  to  be  mere  robbery. 
This  view  of  the  matter  is  partly  true  and  partly  false. 
Every  right-minded  man  must  deplore  the  extent  to 
which  speculation  is  carried  at  the  present  day.  A 
very  considerable  proportion  of  the  transactions,  even 
on  the  legitimate  and  recognized  exchanges,  are  of  the 
nature  of  gambling;  and  the  case  is  far  worse  in  the 
illegitimate  exchanges,  bucket  shops,  and  other  insti- 
tutions of  similar  character  with  which  the  country  is 
cursed.  Such  transactions,  though  they  nominally 
take  the  form  of  trade,  are  really  a  peculiarly  dangerous 
kind  of  betting,  which  probably  does  more  harm  than 
betting  on  horse  races  or  card  games.  The  sums 
involved  are  larger.  The  transactions  look  so  much  like 

[45] 


STANDARDS   OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

legitimate  investment  that  many  a  man  who  would 
shrink  from  the  associations  of  the  poker  table  or  the 
race  track  goes  into  speculation  more  or  less  uncon- 
sciously. Its  apparent  resemblance  to  legitimate  trade 
gives  him  a  false  sense  of  security  and  false  confidence 
in  his  own  judgment.  It  makes  him  ready  to  borrow 
others'  money  to  extend  his  operations.  It  renders  him 
an  easier  prey  to  adverse  chance  or  to  the  wiles  of  the 
professionals  with  whom  he  is  dealing.  It  gives  those 
professionals  every  facility  to  take  all  sorts  of  advantage 
of  their  inside  information,  at  the  expense  of  an  ignorant 
public;  and  it  encourages  the  less  scrupulous  element 
among  them  to  circulate  false  statements  concerning 
the  value  of  the  goods  in  which  they  deal,  or  to  form 
conspiracies  intended  to  influence  that  value,  to  the 
detriment  not  only  of  the  misguided  gamblers,  but  of  the 
legitimate  interests  of  trade. 

If  all  speculation  were  of  this  character,  it  would  be 
easy  to  condemn  and  stop  it.  But  side  by  side  with  this 
wrong  side  of  speculation,  which  does  much  harm  and 
no  good,  there  is  a  right  kind  of  speculation  which  seems 
to  be  an  absolute  necessity  for  the  successful  and  regular 

[46] 


THE  ETHICS  OF  TRADE 

conduct  of  modern  industrial  life.  Much  of  the  business 
of  our  larger  exchanges  is  of  this  sort;  and  there  is  a 
still  greater  volume  of  these  legitimate  and  necessary 
speculative  transactions  which  do  not  get  recorded  in  any 
exchange  at  all.  Without  this  speculation,  recorded 
or  unrecorded,  it  would  be  impossible  for  the  manu- 
facturer and  merchant  to  do  their  work  successfully 
on  the  scale  at  which  it  is  done  to-day. 

It  is  impossible  to  distinguish  the  two  kinds  of  specu- 
lation, the  right  and  wrong  type,  by  the  form  of  trans- 
action. Some  people  think  that  when  a  man  sells  what 
he  has  not  got,  it  must  necessarily  be  an  objectionable 
sort  of  business.  Yet  nine-tenths  of  the  transactions 
of  many  of  our  best  cotton  brokers  are  sales  of  cotton 
which  they  do  not  have,  and  which  may  not  even  be 
in  existence  anywhere.  It  is  a  necessity  for  the  cotton 
manufacturer  and  his  operatives  to  be  able  to  run  the 
mills  as  regularly  as  possible  throughout  the  year. 
The  farther  ahead  a  manufacturer  can  take  orders,  the 
better  it  is  for  him  and  for  his  employees.  He  cannot 
attempt  to  store  all  the  cotton  which  he  wants  for  these 
future  orders  without  sacrifice  of  interest  and  danger 

[47] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC   MORALITY 

of  fire.  Large  storage  of  unused  goods  represents  a  loss, 
not  only  to  his  own  purse,  but  to  the  resources  of  the 
community.  On  the  other  hand,  he  cannot  afford  to 
make  a  price  for  his  future  product  —  a  necessary  basis 
for  any  such  orders  —  when  he  does  not  know  what  the 
cotton  will  cost  him.  What  does  he  do  ?  He  goes  to  a 
broker  —  a  man  who  has  familiarized  himself  with  the 
acreage  of  cotton,  the  amount  of  supplies  left  over  from 
the  last  season,  and  who,  as  time  goes  on,  notes  every 
change  in  weather  which  is  liable  to  affect  the  supply  of 
the  new  crop,  and  every  shift  of  public  demand  which 
will  increase  or  lessen  the  amount  at  his  disposal. 
Acting  on  the  basis  of  his  expert  knowledge,  the  broker 
can  forecast  the  prices  of  cotton  for  future  delivery. 
He  can  leave  the  manufacturer  free  to  make  the  calcu- 
lations concerning  the  parts  of  his  business  in  which  he 
is  well  informed  without  loading  himself  with  risks 
and  burdens  in  a  large  department  in  which  he  is  and 
must  be  very  imperfectly  informed.  Of  course,  a  cotton 
broker  often  makes  mistakes  and  loses  money;  but  his 
mistakes  are  not  so  serious  as  those  which  the  manu- 
facturer would  make.  He  earns  his  profits.  He  creates 

[48] 


THE  ETHICS  OF  TRADE 

in  the  long  run  a  better  demand  for  the  farmer's  cotton 
than  would  otherwise  be  the  case,  and  a  better  adapta- 
tion of  acreage  and  agricultural  wages  to  future  needs 
than  would  be  possible  under  any  other  system. 

What  happens  in  the  cotton  business  is  paralleled  in 
every  other  line  of  industry.  If  I  am  building  a  house, 
I  want  to  know  what  it  will  cost ;  and  this  I  can  know 
only  when  the  dealers  in  timber  and  iron  and  lime  are 
willing  to  make  sales  of  these  commodities  for  future 
delivery  beyond  the  amount  of  those  which  they  have 
stored  in  their  warehouses  or  can  afford  to  have.  It  is 
the  power  to  forecast  future  supplies  and  demands 
which  makes  a  modern  trader  render  his  best  service 
to  society.  In  old  days,  before  the  railroad  and  the 
telegraph  were  invented,  large  profits  were  secured  and 
large  public  services  rendered  by  putting  goods  on  the 
market  in  the  place  where  they  were  needed.  The 
man  who  shipped  wheat  promptly  from  a  spot  where  it 
was  abundant  to  one  where  it  was  scarce  prevented  a 
famine,  and  reaped  a  rich  but  well-deserved  reward  for 
so  doing.  To-day  the  possibility  of  famine  is  mini- 
mized by  the  telegraph  and  the  steamship.  Word  goes 
E  [49] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

from  one  market  to  another  in  a  moment.  A  consign- 
ment comes  back  in  a  day.  There  is  neither  the  op- 
portunity nor  the  need  for  exceptional  skill  in  sending 
these  telegrams  and  making  these  transfers.  Our 
trouble  now  is,  not  in  having  goods  at  the  right  place, 
but  in  having  them  at  the  right  time,  —  in  withdrawing 
them  from  the  market  when  they  are  not  needed,  in  order 
to  place  them  at  the  disposal  of  that  or  some  other  mar- 
ket when  they  are  needed.  No  telegraph  can  forecast 
the  future.  No  steamship  can  transfer  to  the  hereafter 
goods  which  are  being  wasted  in  the  present.  It  is 
the  much-abused  speculator  who,  by  buying  what  he 
does  not  want  in  the  expectation  of  having  it  available 
when  it  is  wanted,  or  by  selling  supplies  which  he  does 
not  control  in  the  well-founded  belief  that  he  is  going 
to  be  able  to  get  them,  keeps  us  from  those  wild  fluc- 
tuations of  trade  and  grave  crises  in  business  whose  evils 
form  the  counterpart  in  the  twentieth  century  to  the 
evils  of  famine  in  ancient  days.  We  cannot  distinguish 
the  right  and  wrong  uses  of  speculation,  either  in  our 
statutes  or  in  our  moral  judgments,  according  to  the 
form  of  the  transaction.  We  must  go  deeper,  in  order 

[50] 


THE  ETHICS  OF  TRADE 

to  see  whether  a  man  is  presumably  meeting  an  actual 
want  of  the  public  or  simply  satisfying  the  craving  of 
his  own  instinct  for  gambling. 

The  first  essential  in  right  speculation  is  that  a  man 
must  be  really  able  to  make  good  his  guarantees  as  to 
the  future.  In  other  words,  he  must  be  risking  his  own 
money.  If  he  is  making  contracts  for  future  delivery 
on  the  basis  of  other  people's  money,  —  whether  through 
actual  borrowings  or  through  inflated  credit, — this 
means  that  the  profits,  if  there  are  profits,  will  go  to  him, 
and  the  losses,  if  there  are  losses,  will  fall  on  somebody 
else.  This  is  not  trade;  it  is  gambling  with  loaded 
dice.  If  we  can  insist  that  the  man  shall  have  capital 
to  make  good  his  guarantees,  we  shall  pave  the  way 
for  a  process  of  natural  selection  by  which  the  skilful 
man,  who  can  meet  the  needs  of  the  public,  will  come 
to  the  front;  while  the  unskilful  man,  from  the  very 
fact  that  he  loses  his  own  money,  will  retire  from  the 
business  as  unprofitable. 

There  are  already  many  lines  of  industry  and  com- 
merce in  which  large  commission  houses  and  brokerage 
firms  have  grown  up,  whose  business  meets  this  test 

[51] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

to  the  fullest  degree;  houses  with  adequate  capital, 
whose  profit  represents  the  profit  due  to  accumulated 
experience.  This  is  clearly  the  right  and  serviceable 
sort  of  speculation.  In  such  industries  the  firms  that 
practise  this  kind  of  speculation  are  honored;  while 
the  gamblers  whose  transactions  are  similar  in  form, 
but  different  in  intelligence  and  solidity  of  purpose, 
are  discredited.  It  only  remains  to  extend  this  differ- 
entiation over  a  wider  field  —  to  assign  the  proper 
meed  of  honor  to  the  moderate  fortunes  that  have 
been  made  by  forecasting  public  needs  in  produce  and 
securities,  and  the  proper  meed  of  dishonor  to  those 
larger  and  more  dazzling  winnings  which  have  been 
made  by  borrowing  the  necessary  capital  to  execute 
some  coup  which  conduces  more  to  a  man's  fortune 
than  to  his  reputation  for  honorable  dealing.  It  is 
because  the  public  judges  transactions  by  their  form 
rather  than  by  their  underlying  relation  to  the  needs  of 
the  market  that  reputable  houses  in  any  line  of  business 
allow  their  names  to  be  connected  with  transactions  of 
this  kind ;  and  it  is  because  reputable  houses  thus  lend 
their  names  to  them  that  disreputable  ones  can  profit 

[52] 


THE  ETHICS  OF  TRADE 

by  the  weakness  and  ignorance  of  their  customers. 
It  is  the  fundamental  purpose  of  the  transaction,  not  its 
outward  form,  that  makes  it  good  or  bad;  that  deter- 
mines whether  the  speculator  is  performing  for  the  public 
the  service  of  ensuring  it  against  fluctuations  in  supply, 
or  is  taking  advantage  of  the  public  desire  to  get  rich 
quickly  and  pandering  to  its  worst  commercial  appe- 
tites. 

There  is  another  set  of  objections  urged  against 
competition  and  the  system  of  trade  ethics  based  upon 
it.  Competition,  in  the  opinion  of  many,  is  but  another 
name  for  the  struggle  for  existence.  To  make  this  a 
basis  of  ethics  is  a  mere  glorification  of  force ;  — 

"  The  good  old  rule,  the  simple  plan 
That  they  should  take  who  have  the  power 
And  they  should  keep  who  can." 

It  may  indeed  work  a  sort  of  rough  justice  where  the 
two  parties  to  a  transaction  are  on  equal  terms.  When 
buyer  and  seller  both  have  money,  the  market  price 
may  be  fair  to  both;  but  when  a  capitalist  who  has 
money  buys  labor  from  a  man  who  has  none,  the  result 
cannot  possibly  be  fair  to  the  latter.  The  capitalist 

[53] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

can  wait.  The  laborer  must  work  on  the  capitalist's 
terms,  or  starve.  Under  these  circumstances  the  op- 
ponents of  competition  say  that  the  modern  competitive 
system  necessarily  involves  a  gradual  accumulation  of 
capital  in  the  hands  of  the  moneyed  class.  It  may 
produce  satisfactory  results  for  the  consumers ;  but  they 
hold  that,  as  between  different  classes  of  producers,  its 
effects  are  in  the  highest  degree  unsatisfactory  and  un- 
just. They  are  willing  to  credit  competition  with  the 
improved  business  methods  and  improved  industrial 
efficiency  of  modern  times ;  but  they  think  that  these  are 
purchased  at  the  expense  of  the  very  lifeblood  of  the 
people.  They  hold  that  with  society  constituted  as  it 
is,  the  fierce  struggle  for  existence  between  different 
workmen  has  produced  so  much  evil  to  the  laborers 
that  it  balances  or  outweighs  the  good  which  it  has 
accomplished  in  other  directions;  and  that  any  man 
who  looks  with  complacency  on  the  ethics  of  the  mod- 
ern competitive  system  must  shut  his  eyes  to  this  enor- 
mous and  widespread  wrong. 

The  relative  amount  of  good  and  evil  existing  under 
the  competitive  system  is  obviously  a  question  of  fact. 

[54] 


THE  ETHICS  OF  TRADE 

For  my  own  part,  I  hold  that  the  good  greatly  out- 
weighs the  evil.  It  seems  to  me  undeniable  that  all 
through  the  nineteenth  century  the  workmen  as  a  class 
have  been  making  great  progress ;  and  that  the  general 
standard  of  a  workman's  wages  in  each  successive  gen- 
eration enables  him  to  buy  more  things  and  better  things 
than  his  father  did.  During  my  work  as  a  labor  com- 
missioner and  as  a  journalist,  I  was  repeatedly  im- 
pressed by  the  fact  that  the  worst  cases  of  destitution, 
whether  in  city  or  country,  were  where  practices  that 
were  typical  in  the  eighteenth  century  had  survived  in 
the  nineteenth.  The  abuses  of  child  labor  which  are 
laid  to  the  account  of  modern  competition  appear  to 
have  existed  in  worse  form  before  the  factory  system 
was  ever  thought  of.  The  little  children  were  worked 
like  slaves  in  their  homes  from  morning  till  night. 
It  was  when  these  abuses  came  out  into  the  light  that 
they  began  to  be  stopped.  The  sweating  system,  the 
tenement-house  cigar  system,  and  the  other  parts  of 
our  industrial  system  which  shock  us  most,  are  rem- 
nants of  the  old  methods,  not  characteristics  of  the 
new  ones.  The  modern  system  has  evils  enough  of  its 

[55] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC   MORALITY 

own  to  answer  for;  but  not,  I  think,  these  particular 
ones  with  which  it  is  perhaps  most  frequently  charged. 
During  the  period  to  which  I  refer  my  attention  was 
called  to  one  phase  of  the  competitive  system  which 
seems  particularly  dangerous.  I  refer  to  those  cases 
where  unlettered  immigrants  with  a  low  standard  of 
living  take  the  bread  out  of  the  mouths  of  men  of 
higher  grade,  intellectually  and  morally,  who  require 
a  correspondingly  higher  standard  of  living  to  sustain 
them.  Yet  even  in  this  extreme  case  I  am  convinced 
that  the  competition  produces  a  net  balance  of  economic 
advantage ;  that  when  you  say  to  the  laborer  who  has 
previously  occupied  the  ground,  "  Rise  or  die,"  the  num- 
ber of  people  who  are  able  to  take  advantage  of  being 
relieved  from  the  drudgery  of  the  lowest  grade  of  labor 
to  rise  is  indefinitely  greater  than  the  number  of  those 
who,  being  unable  to  accept  the  new  conditions,  are 
crowded  out  of  the  means  of  self-support.  Far  be  it 
from  me  to  say  one  word  which  might  seem  to  argue 
indifference  to  the  hardship  of  those  who  could  not 
rise ;  and  yet  the  system  as  a  whole  must  be  judged  by 
its  effect  on  the  large  number  who  are  benefited,  often 

[56] 


THE  ETHICS  OF  TRADE 

in  spite  of  themselves,  rather  than  on  the  comparatively 
small  number  who  would  not  or  could  not  enjoy  its 
benefits.  The  Irishman  of  1830  forced  the  American 
up,  and  not  out.  The  Italian  of  1880  forced  the  Irish- 
man up,  and  not  out.  The  Italian,  in  turn,  if  he  re- 
main here  for  permanent  citizenship,  is  being  forced  up 
to  an  eminence  of  which  his  ancestors  never  dreamed 
by  the  successive  crowds  of  immigrants  from  countries 
farther  east.  There  are  objections,  and  serious  ones, 
to  unrestricted  immigration;  but  they  are  connected 
with  the  difficulty  of  assimilating  as  members  of  our 
body  politic  people  whose  traditions  of  civil  liberty  and 
moral  responsibility  are  different  from  our  own,  and 
whose  language  forms  a  barrier  against  their  rapid 
reception  of  our  ideals,  rather  than  with  any  evil 
economic  effect  which  these  men  are  likely  to  have 
upon  the  production  and  distribution  of  the  wealth  of 
this  country. 

We  are  told  that  competition  between  labor  and  capi- 
tal is  essentially  and  necessarily  unfair.  This  charge 
sounds  plausible  enough;  but  it  really  rests  upon  a 
misconception  of  the  nature  of  competition.  There  is 

[57] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC   MORALITY 

no  competition  between  labor  and  capital.  There  is 
competition  between  capitalists  for  the  services  of  the 
laborers,  and  between  laborers  for  the  opportunity  to 
work  for  the  capitalist.  It  may  well  be  that  the  struggle 
on  the  one  side  is  sometimes  more  intense  than  on  the 
other.  It  may  happen  that  there  are  so  many  workmen 
in  a  given  place  that  they  will  push  wages  down  to 
the  starvation  point,  or  that  there  is  so  much  capital 
in  a  certain  place  that  it  will  push  profits  down  to  zero. 
But  the  important  thing  to  notice  is  that  .where  com- 
petition exists  at  all,  the  abundance  of  the  capital  forms 
a  source  of  strength  to  the  laborer  rather  than  of  weak- 
ness, because  it  means  that  there  is  more  opportunity  for 
his  efficient  labor  and  more  people  who  can  afford  to 
pay  a  good  price  for  his  services.  If  all  the  capital  in  a 
given  line  is  monopolized  under  a  given  organization, 
the  laborer  may  not  get  the  benefit  of  this  state  of 
things.  But  there  have  been  very  few  industries  in 
the  world  where  all  the  opportunities  for  work  or  nearly 
all  of  them  have  been  thus  monopolized.  Until  that 
time  the  competitive  system  makes  every  increase  in 
the  amount  and  efficiency  of  capital  a  means  of  gain  to 

[58] 


THE  ETHICS  OF  TRADE 

the  laborer  instead  of  loss;  and  the  trades-unionist 
who  attempts  to  accelerate  this  process  of  organization 
of  capital  by  insistence  on  the  system  of  collective  bar- 
gaining, has  been  transferring  the  industrial  conflict 
from  a  field  where  the  strength  of  different  capitalists 
helps  the  laborer,  because  the  capitalists  are  pitted 
against  one  another  in  bidding  for  his  services,  to  one 
where  their  strength  hurts  him  because  it  enables  them 
to  endure  longer  than  he  can.  Admitting  the  beneficent 
effects  of  trades-unions  in  some  cases,  and  the  serious 
provocation  given  by  capitalists  and  their  agents  to  the 
formation  of  such  unions  in  other  cases,  we  must  not 
shut  our  eyes  to  the  fact  that  in  America,  during  all 
that  part  of  the  nineteenth  century  where  the  labor 
market  was  actively  competitive,  the  results  to  the  work- 
men in  wages,  comfort,  and  progress  were  decidedly 
better  than  in  England,  where  organized  labor  dealt 
with  organized  capital. 

For  competition  is  a  very  much  more  beneficent 
thing  than  its  critics  are  willing  to  admit;  and  the 
deeper  we  look  into  its  real  workings,  the  more  we  see 
the  folly  of  the  attempts  to  do  without  it.  Competition 

[59] 


STANDARDS   OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

is  a  totally  different  thing  from  the  Darwinian  struggle 
for  existence.  Competitive  ethics  is  not  a  mere  glori- 
fication of  force.  It  has  a  moral  element  which  its 
opponents  overlook.  It  is  a  fight  for  existence  organized 
in  such  a  way  that  the  outside  world  is  benefited  by 
it,  instead  of  being  injured  by  it.  When  two  snakes  or 
two  tigers  are  struggling  as  to  which  shall  get  the  same 
bird,  the  probability  of  an  advantageous  outcome  for 
the  bird  is  very  slight.  When  two  bosses  are  struggling 
as  to  which  shall  get  the  same  workman,  the  probability 
of  an  advantageous  outcome  for  the  workman  is  very 
large.  From  the  standpoint  of  the  parties  who  compete 
with  one  another  there  is  in  each  instance  a  contest; 
but  from  the  standpoint  of  the  other  party  the  intensity 
of  the  contest  means  an  injury  in  one  case  and  a  benefit 
in  the  other.  The  more  snakes  there  are,  the  worse  for 
the  bird ;  but  the  more  bosses  there  are,  the  better  for 
the  workman.  Competition  is  what  its  name  implies 
—  a  simultaneous  petition  or  offering  of  services  under 
which  the  man  who  offers  the  best  service  is  chosen. 
It  is  an  attempt  to  base  survival  on  ethical  efficiency 

rather  than  on  physical  efficiency. 

[60] 


THE  ETHICS  OF  TRADE 

Not  its  acceptance  of  the  ethics  of  competition,  but 
its  attempt  to  apply  those  ethics  to  cases  where  com- 
petition does  not  exist,  forms  the  basis  of  the  really 
serious  charges  which  the  moralist  can  bring  against 
the  modern  business  world.  What  some  of  these  cases 
are  and  what  ought  to  be  done  with  them,  will  be  con- 
sidered in  the  next  lecture. 

To  sum  up.  A  just  price,  according  to  the  traditional 
and  generally  accepted  view,  is  one  which  conforms  as 
closely  as  possible  to  the  cost  of  producing  the  com- 
modity; and  of  that  cost  labor  is  the  largest  element. 
But  a  law  or  a  public  sentiment  which  compelled  the 
trader  to  base  his  price  on  cost,  and  condemned  as 
unjust  all  exceptional  profits,  was  found  to  defeat  its 
own  end.  It  was  better  in  time  of  scarcity  to  allow 
the  temporary  high  prices  to  serve  as  a  stimulus  for 
increased  supply.  Even  if  that  increased  supply  was 
brought  about  by  the  skill  of  speculators,  it  was  well 
to  leave  speculators  their  profit,  as  long  as  they  really 
undertook  to  meet  the  need  and  prevent  the  scarcity. 
We  are  justified  in  approving  as  on  the  whole  beneficent 
the  theory  that  the  best  price  for  society  is  that  which  is 

[61] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

made  under  open  competition  of  buyer  with  buyer  on 
the  one  hand,  of  seller  with  seller  on  the  other  hand; 
and  that  where  competition  really  exists  the  ethics  of 
modern  trade  are  sound. 


[62] 


CHAPTER  III 


CHAPTER  III 

ETHICS  OF   CORPORATE  MANAGEMENT 

WHEN  I  go  to  a  responsible  store  to  make  a  pur- 
chase, I  have  every  reason  to  believe  that  the 
price  charged  will  be  a  fair  one.     I  may  not 
like  the  goods ;  I  may  not  feel  that  I  can  afford  the  price ; 
but  if  I  like  the  goods  and  can  afford  the  price,  I  assume 
that   I  am   not  being  cheated.     The  competition  of 
different   establishments   makes   the   general  scale   of 
charges  just ;   and  public  sentiment  in  favor  of  a  one- 
price  system  assures  me  that  I  shall  have  the  benefit  of 
this  general  scale  of  charges  in  my  own  particular  case. 
If  I  go  to  a  bank  to  borrow  money  on  good  security, 
I  have  the  same  feeling.     The  competition  of  respon- 
sible borrowers  on  the  one  hand,  and  responsible  lenders 
on  the  other,  makes  a  fair  interest  rate  at  which  the 
number  of  those  who  can  give  good  security  for  the 
management  of  other  people's  capital  absorbs  the  offer- 
F  [65] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC   MORALITY 

ings  of  those  who  are  willing  to  lend  their  money.  Or, 
if  I  try  to  sell  my  services  in  any  of  the  recognized  lines 
of  industry,  I  have  confidence  that  both  the  self-interest 
and  self-respect  of  the  man  with  whom  I  am  dealing  will 
lead  him  to  offer  me  a  fair  market  rate,  and  that  the 
scale  of  wages  or  fees  thus  created  will  be  more  advan- 
tageous on  the  whole  than  anything  which  could  be 
devised  by  law. 

Of  course  there  are  numerous  exceptions.  The  man 
or  woman  who  hires  a  cab  is  by  no  means  certain  that 
the  self-respect  of  the  cabman  will  lead  him  to  believe 
in  a  one-price  system;  and  while  the  competition  of 
different  cabs  with  one  another  may  make  a  fair  enough 
average  rate  of  compensation,  there  is  great  probability 
that  extortion  will  be  practised  in  individual  instances. 
Therefore  the  law  steps  in  to  regulate  the  price  of  cabs. 
The  man  or  woman  who  has  occasion  to  borrow  of 
a  pawnbroker  has  no  assurance  that  the  pawnbroker 
will  believe  in  a  one-price  system  or  give  the  benefit 
of  a  market  rate  of  interest.  Hence  there  is  a  good 
deal  of  well-founded  demand  for  usury  laws.  The 
only  reason  why  we  do  not  have  them  is  because  the 

[66] 


ETHICS  OF  CORPORATE  MANAGEMENT 

advocates  of  such  laws  generally  object  to  interest  in 
itself,  rather  than  to  extortionate  variations  from  market 
rates  of  interest. 

But  the  most  important  cases  of  departure  from  the 
one-price  system,  and  of  apparent  need  of  some  further 
protection  than  is  given  by  competition,  do  not  come  in 
connection  with  cabs  or  pawnbrokers  or  other  minor 
industries  of  any  kind.  They  come  in  connection  with 
the  dealings  of  large  corporations  which  obtain  a  mo- 
nopoly of  the  market  for  some  line  of  goods  or  services. 

In  his  charmingly  practical  book  on  Politics, 
Aristotle  tells  two  stories  which  are  of  perennial  interest 
to  the  student  of  industrial  combination.  In  the  first 
of  these  he  relates  how  Thales  of  Miletus  was  a  great 
philosopher,  but  was  reproached  by  his  neighbors 
because  he  was  not  as  rich  as  they  were.  By  his  ac- 
quaintance with  astronomy,  Thales  foresaw  that  there 
would  be  large  crops  of  olives;  and  he  purchased  all 
the  olive  presses  of  Miletus,  depositing  a  very  small 
sum  in  each  case  so  as  to  make  the  transaction  complete. 
When  the  olives  were  ripe,  behold !  there  was  no  one 
but  Thales  to  rent  men  the  presses  whereby  they 

[67] 


STANDARDS   OF  PUBLIC   MORALITY 

might  make  their  oil;  and  Thales,  who  was  thus  able 
to  charge  what  price  he  pleased,  realized  an  enormous 
sum.  He  did  this,  says  Aristotle,  not  because  he  cared 
for  the  money,  but  to  show  his  neighbors  that  a  philoso- 
pher can  be  richer  than  anybody  else  if  he  wants  to, 
and  if  he  is  not,  it  simply  proves  that  he  has  more  worthy 
objects  of  contemplation. 

There  was  a  man  in  Syracuse,  Aristotle  goes  on  to 
say,  in  the  days  of  Dionysius  the  Tyrant,  who  bought 
all  the  iron  in  Sicily  on  so  narrow  a  margin  that  without 
raising  the  price  very  much  he  was  able  to  make  twice  the 
amount  of  his  total  investment  in  a  short  time.  When 
Dionysius  the  Tyrant  heard  of  this,  he  was  pleased  with 
the  ingenuity  of  the  man ;  and  he  told  him  that  he  might 
keep  his  money,  but  that  he  had  better  leave  Syracuse. 

These  stories  show  plainly  enough  that  monopolies 
are  no  new  thing;  that  more  than  two  thousand  years 
ago  there  was  a  Standard  Oil  Company  of  Asia  Minor 
and  a  United  States  Steel  Corporation  of  Sicily;  and 
that  the  President  of  the  United  States  is  by  no  means 
the  first  monarch  who  has  addressed  himself  somewhat 
aggressively  to  the  problem  of  trust  regulation.  But 

[68] 


ETHICS  OF   CORPORATE  MANAGEMENT 

in  ancient  times  these  monopolies  of  producers  or  mer- 
chants were  an  exception ;  now  they  are  becoming  the 
general  rule. 

The  development  of  the  power-loom  and  the  spin- 
ning-machine in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
followed  shortly  by  that  of  the  steam-engine,  substi- 
tuted a  system  of  centralized  industry,  where  a  number 
of  people  work  together,  for  the  scattered  industry  of 
the  older  times,  where  people  worked  separately.  The 
invention  of  the  steamship  and  the  railroad  enabled  the 
large  factories  of  modern  times  to  send  their  goods  all 
over  the  world,  and  allowed  the  establishments  to  increase 
in  size  as  long  as  any  economy  in  production  was  to 
be  gained  by  such  an  increase.  The  capital  required 
for  these  large  industries  was  far  beyond  the  power  of 
any  one  man  or  any  small  group  of  partners  to  furnish. 
The  modern  industrial  corporation,  with  free  transfer 
of  stock,  limited  liability  of  the  shareholders,  and 
representative  government  through  a  board  of  directors, 
was  developed  as  a  means  of  meeting  this  need  for 
capital.  Men  who  could  take  no  direct  part  in  the 
management  of  an  industrial  enterprise,  and  whose 

[69] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

capital  was  only  a  very  small  fraction  of  what  was 
needed  for  the  purpose,  could,  under  the  system  of 
limited  liability,  safely  associate  themselves  with  a 
hundred  or  a  thousand  others  to  take  the  chance  of 
profit  which  concentration  of  capital  afforded. 

These  industrial  units  soon  became  so  large  that  a 
single  one  of  them  was  able  to  supply  the  whole  market. 
Competition  was  done  away  with,  and  monopoly  took 
its  place.  This  effect  was  first  felt  in  the  case  of  rail- 
road transportation.  You  could  not  generally  have 
the  choice  between  two  independent  lines  of  railroad, 
because  business  which  would  furnish  a  profit  to  one 
line  was  generally  quite  inadequate  to  support  a  second. 
Nor  could  you  hope  for  the  competition  of  different 
owners  of  locomotives  and  cars  on  the  same  line  of 
track,  because  of  the  opportunities  for  accident  and  loss 
to  which  such  a  system  was  exposed.  In  England, 
indeed,  they  were  impressed  with  the  analogy  of  a  rail- 
road to  a  turnpike  or  canal,  and  for  nearly  half  a  cen- 
tury after  the  establishment  of  railroads  they  made  all 
their  laws  on  the  supposition  that  cars  and  locomotives 
would  be  owned  by  different  people.  But  the  failure 

[70] 


ETHICS  OF  CORPORATE  MANAGEMENT 

of  these  laws,  when  so  persistently  enacted  and  backed 
by  a  conservatism  of  feeling  so  strong  as  that  of  the 
English  nation,  is  the  best  proof  of  the  impracticability 
of  the  scheme.  By  1850  it  became  pretty  clear  that  most 
railroads  had  a  monopoly  of  their  local  business.  By 
1870  the  consequences  of  this  monopoly  had  become 
quite  clearly  apparent. 

These  consequences  were  in  some  respects  good  and 
in  some  respects  bad.  The  railroad  managers  were 
quick  to  introduce  improvements  and  to  effect  economy 
of  organization.  These  improvements  allowed  them 
to  make  rates  very  low  on  long-distance  business  in 
general,  and  particularly  on  business  which  came  into 
competition  with  other  railroads  or  with  water-routes. 
But  the  extreme  lowness  of  these  through  rates  only 
emphasized  the  glaring  inequality  between  the  treat- 
ment of  the  through  or  competitive  business,  and  the 
local  business  of  which  the  railroad  had  a  monopoly. 
On  the  old  turnpike  the  cost  of  transportation  had  been 
high,  but  the  shipper  could  rely  upon  the  price  as  fair. 
There  was  always  enough  competition  between  different 
carriers  to  prevent  them  from  making  extortionate 

[71] 


STANDARDS   OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

profits  on  any  one  shipment.  On  the  railroad  which 
took  the  place  of  the  turnpike  the  cost  of  transporta- 
tion was  very  much  lower,  but  there  was  no  assurance 
whatever  of  fairness.  The  local  rates  were  sometimes 
kept  two  or  three  times  as  high  as  the  through  ones; 
and  the  shipper  had  to  see  car  loads  of  freight  hauled 
to  market  past  his  house  from  more  distant  points  at 
twenty-five  dollars  a  car  load,  when  he  himself  was  pay- 
ing fifty  dollars  a  car  load  for  but  a  part  of  the  same 
haulage.  Nor  was  this  the  worst.  Arbitrary  differ- 
ences between  places  were  bad  enough;  but  there  was 
a  similar  discrimination  between  different  persons  in 
the  same  place.  The  local  freight  agent  was  a  sort  of 
almoner  of  the  corporation.  The  man  who  gained  his 
ear,  whether  by  honest  means  or  not,  got  a  low  rate. 
The  man  who  failed  to  get  the  ear  of  the  freight  agent 
had  to  pay  a  much  higher  rate  for  the  same  service. 

In  this  country  things  were  at  their  worst  in  the  years 
immediately  following  the  Civil  War.  While  we  had 
a  one-price  system  in  the  trade  of  the  country,  both 
wholesale  and  retail,  and  in  its  banking,  and  to  a  large 

degree  in  its  labor  market,  the  whole  system  of  Ameri- 

[72] 


ETHICS  OF  CORPORATE  MANAGEMENT 

can  railroad  rates  was  run  on  principles  which  a  de- 
cently conducted  store  would  have  scorned  to  admit 
into  its  management.  Our  industrial  methods  had 
changed  too  fast  for  our  ethics  to  keep  pace  with  them. 
In  the  old-fashioned  lines  of  business  people  were  al- 
lowed to  charge  what  prices  they  pleased,  because  com- 
petition kept  their  power  of  making  mistakes  within 
narrow  limits.  In  the  local  railroad  freight  business 
competition  was  done  away  with,  and  the  managers  did 
not  see  the  necessity  of  substituting  any  other  legal  or 
moral  restraint  in  its  stead.  In  fact,  they  asserted  a  con- 
stitutional right  to  be  free  of  all  other  legal  or  moral  re- 
straints. They  regarded  the  liberty  to  serve  the  public 
in  their  own  way,  which  had  been  allowed  them  under 
the  competitive  system,  as  carrying  with  it  a  right  to 
hurt  the  public  in  their  own  way  when  the  protection 
of  competition  was  done  away  with.  Instead  of  seeing 
that  the  constitutional  rights  for  the  protection  of  prop- 
erty had  grown  up  because  property  was  wisely  used, 
they  asserted  that  it  was  none  of  the  public's  business 
how  they  used  the  property,  as  long  as  they  kept 
within  the  letter  of  the  Constitution. 

[73] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

Of  course  this  arbitrary  exercise  of  power  provoked 
a  reaction.  The  state  legislatures  of  the  Mississippi 
Valley  passed  the  various  Granger  laws  which  were 
placed  on  their  statute  books  from  1870  to  1875.  These 
laws  represented  an  attempt  to  reduce  rates  as  unintel- 
ligent and  crude  as  had  been  the  attempts  of  the  rail- 
road agents  to  maintain  rates.  In  the  conflict  of  con- 
stitutional authority,  the  courts  on  the  whole  took  the 
side  of  the  legislatures  more  than  they  did  that  of  the 
railroads;  and  the  ill-judged  laws  regulating  railroad 
charges,  which  could  not  be  repealed  until  several 
years  too  late,  were  an  important  factor  in  increasing 
the  commercial  distress  that  followed  the  crisis  of  1873. 

Just  when  things  were  at  their  worst  a  really  great 
man  appeared  on  the  scene  of  action  in  Charles  Francis 
Adams  of  the  Massachusetts  Railroad  Commission. 
He  promulgated  an  idea,  essentially  ethical  in  its  charac- 
ter, which  not  only  was  of  great  service  at  the  time,  but 
has  been  the  really  vital  force  in  all  good  schemes  of 
corporate  regulation  ever  since.  It  is  hardly  too  much 
to  say  that  all  our  plans  for  dealing  with  corporate 
monopoly  have  been  successful  according  to  the  extent 

[74] 


ETHICS  OF  CORPORATE  MANAGEMENT 

to  which  they  conformed  to  Mr.  Adams's  idea,  and  that 
their  ill  success  in  various  cases  has  been  the  result  of 
their  departure  from  it.  Mr.  Adams's  central  principle 
was  this.  In  the  management  of  a  railroad  the  tempo- 
rary interests  of  the  road  and  of  its  various  shippers 
are  often  divergent ;  but  the  permanent  interests  of  the 
railroad  and  of  the  various  shippers  come  very  much 
closer  together  than  the  temporary  ones,  and  can  almost 
be  said  to  coincide.  A  railroad  which  is  managed  to 
make  the  most  profit  for  the  moment  will  try  to  make 
very  low  rates  on  through  business  that  might  other- 
wise go  to  another  line,  and  will  squeeze  to  the  utmost 
the  local  shippers  who  have  no  such  refuge.  But  if  a 
manager  looks  five  years  or  ten  years  ahead,  he  will 
see  that  such  a  policy  kills  the  local  business,  which  after 
all  must  furnish  the  road's  best  custom,  and  stimulates 
a  kind  of  competitive  business  which  can  and  will  go 
somewhere  else  when  the  slightest  opportunity  is  given. 
The  manager  who  looks  to  the  future,  therefore, 
instead  of  to  the  present,  will  put  the  local  business 
on  the  same  level  as  the  through  business;  and  if  he 

makes  any  difference  at  all  in  the  charge,  it  will  be  due 

[75] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

to  a  slightly  superior  economy  of  handling  large  and 
regular  consignments  for  long  distances,  as  compared 
with  the  small  and  irregular  consignments  of  inter- 
mediate points.  The  agent  who  simply  wants  to  get 
the  most  money  that  he  can  for  the  moment  will  see  an 
apparent  advantage  in  making  a  special  bargain  with 
each  customer.  The  agent  who  takes  a  long  look 
ahead  will  do  just  what  the  storekeeper  does  who  takes 
a  long  look  ahead.  He  will  see  that  the  right  customer 
to  develop  is  the  self-respecting  man  who  is  content 
with  the  same  treatment  as  other  customers;  who  is 
too  proud  for  begging  and  too  honest  for  bribery. 

I  cannot  go  into  all  the  details  of  the  application  of 
this  theory.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  during  the  compara- 
tively short  time  when  he  was  at  the  head  of  the 
Massachusetts  Commission,  Mr.  Adams  did,  in  fact, 
persuade  the  railroad  men  of  his  state,  and  of  a  great 
many  other  states,  to  take  this  view  of  the  matter ;  that 
by  his  recommendation,  made  without  any  authority 
except  the  authority  of  common  sense,  he  permanently 
removed  more  abuses  in  railroad  management  than  all 

the  various  state  statutes  put  together;   and  that  the 

[76] 


ETHICS  OF  CORPORATE  MANAGEMENT 

judicial  decisions  of  the  years  from  1875  to  1885,  when 
Mr.  Adams's  influence  was  dominant,  show  a  con- 
stantly increased  understanding,  not  only  of  the  prin- 
ciples of  railroad  economy,  but  of  the  principles  which 
make  for  the  permanent  public  welfare  of  shippers  and 
investors  alike. 

I  have  spoken  of  Mr.  Adams's  influence  as  an  ethi- 
cal one.  The  Railroad  Commission  of  Massachusetts, 
under  the  original  bill  which  established  it,  had  practi- 
cally no  powers  except  the  power  to  report.  It  was  for 
this  reason  regarded  by  many  as  likely  to  be  a  totally 
ineffective  body.  This  absence  of  specific  powers  was 
just  what  Mr.  Adams  welcomed.  It  threw  the  Com- 
mission back  on  the  power  of  common  sense  —  which 
does  not  seem  as  strong  as  statutory  rights  to  prosecute 
people  and  put  them  in  prison,  but  which,  in  the  hands 
of  a  man  who  really  possesses  it,  is  actually  very  much 
stronger.  And  when  commissions  of  more  recent 
years,  disregarding  the  experience  of  Mr.  Adams,  have 
besought  over  and  over  again  for  an  increase  of  their 
power  to  make  rates,  and  their  power  to  prosecute 
offenders,  and  their  power  to  keep  the  courts  from 

[77] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC   MORALITY 

reviewing  their  acts,  I  am  reminded  of  the  minister  in 
the  country  church,  who  said,  "  O  Lord,  we  pray  for 
power;  O  Lord,  we  pray  for  power;"  until  an  old 
deacon,  unable  to  contain  himself,  interrupted,  "  'Taint 
power  you  lack,  young  man ;  it's  idees  ! " 

In  a  complex  matter  like  this  we  are  governed  by 
public  opinion.  Anything  that  makes  it  necessary  for 
a  man  to  get  public  opinion  behind  a  measure  of  ad- 
ministration or  regulation  prevents  him  from  trying 
unsound  experiments,  and  assures  him  that  the  things 
that  he  carries  through  will  be  successful  in  fact  and 
not  merely  in  name.  Good  sense  is  needed  to  create 
acquiescence  on  the  part  of  the  courts,  and  to  prevent 
widespread  evasion  of  statutes  and  ordinances  by  the 
business  men  of  the  community  as  a  body.  Any  measure 
which  seems  to  dispense  with  the  necessity  of  its  exercise 
is  pretty  sure  to  end  in  disaster. 

I  have  gone  into  the  detail  of  Mr.  Adams's  work  for 
the  sake  of  this  ethical  lesson  which  it  inculcates. 
We  have  passed  beyond  the  conditions  of  Mr.  Adams's 
time.  National  regulation  has  taken  the  place  of 
state  regulation  of  railroads.  Other  forms  of  corporate 

[78] 


ETHICS  OF   CORPORATE  MANAGEMENT 

activity  have  organized  into  monopolies  perhaps  more 
widespread  and  powerful  than  any  railroad  monopoly 
ever  was.  The  relations  of  corporations  to  their  em- 
ployees, and  the  mutual  duties  of  organizations  of  capi- 
tal and  labor  toward  the  public  in  making  continuous 
public  service  possible,  have  become  vastly  more  com- 
plex than  they  were  thirty  years  ago.  But  the  essential 
fact  still  remains  that  the  problem  can  be  settled  only 
by  the  exercise  of  common  sense  and  a  certain  amount 
of  unselfishness.  Any  law  which  seeks  to  render  these 
qualities  unnecessary  or  superfluous  is  foredoomed  to 
failure.  Any  citizen  who  lets  these  qualities  fall  into 
qbeyance,  falls  short  of  a  proper  conception  of  public 
duty.  The  larger  his  position  of  influence  in  the  in- 
dustrial world,  the  greater  is  the  responsibility  upon  him 
to  bring  these  qualities  into  use  in  the  conduct  of  cor- 
porate business. 

The  president  of  a  large  corporation  is  in  a  place  of 
public  trust.  In  an  obvious  sense  he  is  a  trustee  for 
the  stockholders  and  creditors  of  his  corporation.  In 
a  less  obvious  but  equally  important  sense  he  is  a  trustee 

on  behalf  of  the  public. 

[79] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC   MORALITY 

In  regard  to  the  first  of  these  points,  the  community 
has  made  substantial  and  gratifying  progress  toward 
proper  moral  standards  and  their  enforcement.  It  will 
perhaps  create  surprise  that  I  say  this  so  unreservedly, 
when  we  have  the  results  of  the  insurance  scandals 
freshly  in  mind.  But  bad  as  these  things  were,  they 
were  not  nearly  so  bad  as  many  things  that  happened 
a  generation  earlier;  and  when  the  insurance  scandals 
became  known,  they  created  an  outburst  of  public 
feeling  of  a  very  different  kind  from  anything  which  ' 
would  have  developed  forty  years  ago.  The  spontaneous 
and  overwhelming  character  of  this  outburst  shows  a 
great  moral  advance.  In  the  year  1870  it  was  the  com- 
monest thing  in  the  world  for  the  president  of  a  large 
corporation  to  use  his  position  as  a  means  of  enriching 
himself  and  his  friends  at  the  expense  of  the  stock- 
holders in  general;  and  it  might  almost  be  added  that 
it  was  the  rarest  thing  in  the  world  for  anybody  to  ob- 
ject. The  fact  that  Cornelius  Vanderbilt  admitted  his 
stockholders  to  the  benefit  of  profitable  "  deals,"  instead 
of  taking  the  whole  for  himself  and  his  friends,  was  a 

sufficient  departure  from  the  usage  of  the  time  to  excite 

[80] 


ETHICS  OF   CORPORATE  MANAGEMENT 

universal  remark.  The  worst  things  which  were  done 
in  our  insurance  companies  represent  a  pious  regard  for 
the  law  and  a  scrupulous  observance  of  the  principles 
of  morality,  as  compared  with  some  of  the  transactions 
in  Erie  in  the  early  seventies.  Ten  years  later  things 
had  improved.  It  was  no  longer  considered  proper  for 
a  president  to  wreck  his  company  in  order  to  enrich 
himself.  Yet  even  in  this  decade  it  was  held  that  minori- 
ties of  stockholders  had  no  rights  which  majorities  were 
bound  to  respect;  and  while  the  public  did  not  justify 
the  president  in  getting  rich  at  the  expense  of  his  stock- 
holders, it  saw  no  harm  if  he  used  his  inside  informa- 
tion to  get  rich  at  the  expense  of  anybody  and  every- 
body else.  It  is  greatly  to  the  credit  of  some  of  our  best 
railroad  men  that  in  the  last  decade  of  the  nineteenth 
century  we  rose  above  this  state  of  things.  The  ex- 
ample of  a  recent  president  of  the  Lake  Shore  Railroad, 
who  died  a  relatively  poor  man  when  the  stock  of  his 
corporation  stood  higher  than  that  of  almost  any  other 
railroad  in  the  country,  is  a  thing  which  deserves  to  be 
remembered  —  and  which  has  been. 

Banks  and  railroads  were  the  two  lines  of  business 
G  [81] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

where  corporate  scandals  first  developed  on  a  large 
scale.  They  are  now  the  two  lines  of  business  where 
standards  of  corporate  honor,  beyond  what  the  law 
could  enforce,  have  become  pretty  well  established. 
This  is  no  mere  coincidence.  Corporate  powers  gave 
opportunities  for  abuse  which  did  not  exist  before. 
Where  these  powers  were  greatest,  these  abuses  developed 
first  and  made  the  earliest  public  scandals.  It  was 
here  that  the  business  men  themselves  felt  the  need  of 
remedies  deeper  reaching  than  those  which  the  law 
could  give.  Combinations  of  merchants  or  manufac- 
turers or  of  financiers  outside  the  regular  lines  of  bank- 
ing were  a  later  thing,  and  therefore  we  are  only  at  this 
moment  correcting  the  evils  which  are  incident  to  their 
conduct. 

It  takes  a  long  time  for  a  man  to  learn  to  transfer  a 
principle  of  morality  which  he  fully  recognizes  in  one 
field  to  another  field  of  slightly  different  location  and 
character,  particularly  if  the  application  of  strict  moral- 
ity in  the  new  field  is  going  to  hurt  his  personal  interest. 
I  remember  a  story  of  a  country  court  in  a  warranty 
case  which  furnishes  an  instance  in  point.  One  man 

[82] 


ETHICS   OF  CORPORATE  MANAGEMENT 

had  sold  another  a  cow,  and  had  represented  that  cow 
as  possessing  certain  good  qualities  —  adding,  how- 
ever, that  he  did  not  warrant  her.  The  cow  proved 
not  to  possess  the  qualities  alleged,  and  the  buyer  sought 
to  recover  the  purchase-money.  As  there  was  no  dis- 
pute about  the  facts,  the  plaintiff's  attorney  thought 
that  he  had  an  easy  case;  for  it  is  a  well-established 
principle  of  law  that  a  disclaimer  of  warranty  in  such  a 
sale  does  not  protect  the  transaction  from  the  taint  of 
fraud,  if  the  matters  in  question  were  ones  which  the 
seller  really  could  know  and  the  buyer  could  not.  He 
showed  a  sufficient  number  of  legal  precedents  to  il- 
lustrate this  principle,  but  was  somewhat  dumbfounded 
when  the  opposing  lawyer  rose  and  said :  "  May  it  please 
the  court,  every  one  of  the  cases  cited  by  my  learned 
brother  is  a  horse  case.  I  defy  him  to  produce  one 
relating  to  horned  cattle."  The  court  was  impressed 
with  this  fact,  and  instructed  the  jury  to  the  effect  that 
it  had  been  established  from  time  immemorial  that  a 
disclaimer  of  warranty  was  invalid  with  regard  to  a 
horse,  but  that  the  case  of  a  cow  was  something  totally 
different.  We  witnessed  a  somewhat  similar  condi- 

[83] 


STANDARDS   OF  PUBLIC   MORALITY 

tion  in  recent  years,  when  men  who  would  have  recog- 
nized that  it  was  wrong  to  get  rich  at  the  expense  of  a 
stockholder,  who  had  clear  and  definite  rights  to  divi- 
dends that  were  earned,  were  perfectly  willing  to  use 
all  kinds  of  means  to  enrich  themselves  at  the  expense 
of  the  policy  holders,  whose  rights  were  vague  and  in- 
definite. The  lesson  of  last  year  was  a  terrible  one; 
but  I  believe  that  it  has  been  thoroughly  learned. 
The  business  community  of  to-day  recognizes  that  the 
president  and  directors  of  a  corporation  have  a  fig!ii£iaiy_ 
relation  both  to  their  stockholders  and  to  their  creditors ; 
that  any  man  who  disregards  this  relation  is  guilty  of 
breach  of  trust,  just  as  much  as  he  would  be  if  he  used 
his  position  as  guardian  of  an  orphan  to  enrich  himself 
at  the  expense  of  his  ward.  If  any  man  does  not  see 
this,  the  business  community  despises  his  intellect. 
If  he  does  see  this  and  acts  in  disregard  of  it,  the  busi- 
ness community  despises  his  character. 

Unfortunately  the  obligation  of  the  managers  of  our 
corporations  to  the  public  is  not  yet  as  clearly  recog- 
nized as  their  obligation  to  the  stockholders.  Some 
of  those  who  are  most  scrupulous  about  doing  all  that 

[84] 


ETHICS   OF   CORPORATE  MANAGEMENT 

they  can  for  the  stockholders  make  this  an  excuse  for 
doing  as  little  as  they  can  for  the  public  in  general, 
and  disclaim  indignantly  the  existence  of  any  wider 
trust  or  any  outside  duty  which  should  interfere  with 
the  performance  of  their  primary  trust  to  the  last 
penny.  There  is  many  a  man  who  in  the  conduct  of 
his  own  life,  and  even  of  his  own  personal  business,  is 
scrupulously  regardful  of  public  opinion,  but  who,  as 
the  president  of  a  corporation,  disregards  that  opinion 
rather  ostentatiously.  Personally  he  is  sensitive  to 
public  condemnation;  but  as  a  trustee  he  honestly 
believes  that  he  has  no  right  to  indulge  any  such  sen- 
sitiveness. He  is  unselfish  in  the  one  case,  and  selfish 
in  the  other.  I  believe  that  this  results  from  an  ex- 
tremely shortsighted  view  of  the  matter;  and  that  the 
conscientious  fulfilment  of  wider  obligations,  which  he 
assumes  as  a  matter  of  course  when  his  own  money  is 
at  stake,  is  at  once  wise  policy  and  sound  morality 
when  he  is  acting  as  trustee  for  the  money  and  in- 
terests of  others. 

Even  from  the  narrowest  standpoint  of  pecuniary 
interest,  the  duty  of  the   corporate  president  to  the 

[85] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC   MORALITY 

investors  demands  that  he  should  by  his  life  and  his 
language  strive  to  diminish  the  danger  of  legal  sgolia.- 

tjon  which  threatens  property  rights  in  general  and 

•% 
the  rights  of  corporate  property  in  particular.     This 

obligation  is  partly  recognized,  and  partly  not.  Our 
leaders  of  industry,  as  a  rule,  do  not  spend  great  sums 
on  ostentatious  luxury,  and  do  spend  great  sums  on 
objects  of  public  benefit.  Both  of  these  facts  are  in- 
valuable conservative  forces.  On  the  other  hand,  too 
many  of  them  insist  publicly  on  an  extreme  view  of 
their  legal  rights  and  claims,  which  cannot  help  irri- 
tating their  opponents,  and  which  does  a  great  deal 
more  harm  to  the  interests  of  property  than  most  people 
think.  It  was  the  arrogance  of  the  freight  agents,  quite 
as  much  as  the  mistakes  in  their  schedule  of  charges, 
that  precipitated  the  Granger  agitation.  They  de- 
fiantly refused  to  recognize  the  shipper's  point  of  view. 
Every  such  defiance  by  the  head  of  a  large  corporation 
makes  more  converts  to  radicalism  and  socialism  than 
the  speaker  ever  dreams.  If  a  man  intends  to  stand  on 
his  legal  rights,  it  is  generally  wise  for  him  to  keep  as 

quiet  as  the  circumstances  admit.     The  cases  are  few 

[86] 


ETHICS  OF  CORPORATE  MANAGEMENT 

and  far  between  where  a  loud  statement  in  advance 
that  he  is  going  to  stand  on  his  legal  rights,  and  that 
those  rights  in  his  judgment  are  consonant  with  the 
laws  of  God,  produces  anything  but  an  adverse  effect 
on  his  interests  and  on  the  interests  of  those  whom  he 
represents.  It  is  not  for  the  profit  of  the  year's  balance- 
sheet  that  the  corporate  president  should  regard  him- 
self as  responsible,  but  for  the  profit  in  the  long  run; 
and  that  profit  in  the  long  run  is  identified  with  the 
maintenance  of  a  conservative  spirit  and  the  avoidance 
of  unnecessary  conflicts  between  those  who  have  and 
those  who  have  not. 

The  duty  of  the  corporate  president  to  the  investors 
also  demands  that  he  use  all  wise  means  for  the  main- 
tenance of  continuous  public  service.  The  more  com- 
plete the  monopoly  which  he  has,  and  the  more  vital 
the  public  necessity  which  he  provides,  the  greater  is 
the  importance  of  this  aspect  of  his  trust  for  the  per- 
manence of  the  interests  which  he  represents.  For  if 
the  employer  is  indifferent  to  the  public  need  in  this 
regard,  the  employees  will  be  still  more  indifferent.  If 
he  tries  to  make  public  necessity  a  means  to  reenforce 

[87] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

his  demands,  they  will  make  that  public  necessity  a 
means  to  reenf orce  their  demands ;  and  in  this  contest 
the  employees  will  have  every  advantage  on  their  side. 
Each  conflict  of  this  kind  will  increase  the  demand 
for  public  regulation  of  corporate  affairs,  even  if  the 
interests  of  the  investors  suffer  thereby;  and  it  may 
reach  a  point  where  many  lines  of  business  will  be  taken 
out  of  the  hands  of  private  corporations  and  into  the 
hands  of  the  government. 

In  the  old  days,  when  the  public  was  served  by  a 
number  of  independent  establishments,  a  strike  was  a 
grave  matter  for  the  establishment  where  it  existed  and 
a  comparatively  small  thing  for  anybody  else.  The  pub- 
lic got  its  goods  from  some  other  quarter.  The  slight 
shortage  in  the  supply  might  raise  the  prices  a  little, 
but  it  did  not  produce  a  famine.  The  community  as 
a  whole  could  wait  complacently  for  the  fight  to  be 
settled.  If,  however,  the  company  has  a  monopoly, 
the  conditions  are'  reversed.  The  strike,  if  protracted, 
causes  great  inconvenience  and  generally  considerable 
suffering  to  the  public,  while  the  effect  on  the  finances 

of  the  corporation  is  often  comparatively  slight.    Indeed, 

[88] 


ETHICS  OF  CORPORATE  MANAGEMENT 

it  has  become  a  proverb  that  strikes  are  not  as  a  rule 
good  reasons  for  sale  of  the  securities  of  the  companies 
affected.  I  am  afraid  that  this  fact  makes  the  presidents 
of  our  corporations,  especially  those  who  hold  a  narrow 
view  of  their  duties,  more  careless  than  they  otherwise 
would  be  about  men  whom  they  choose  for  positions 
of  superintendence,  and  about  the  policy  which  they 
adopt  in  early  stages  of  labor  disputes.  But  it  is  upon 
care  hi  these  particulars,  rather  than  upon  any  machin- 
ery for  compulsory  arbitration,  that  we  must  rely  for 
i 

the  prevention  of  strikes.  I  suppose  that  sometime 
we  shall  devise  systems  of  arbitration  which  will  avoid 
a  large  number  of  our  industrial  quarrels;  but  those 
that  I  have  actually  seen  in  operation  do  not  appear 
very  promising.  We  are  told  that  compulsory  arbitra- 
tion has  been  made  to  work  in  New  Zealand ;  but  some 
of  the  official  information  which  we  get  from  New 
Zealand  has  been  so  totally  discredited  that  we  must  be 
a  little  cautious  about  accepting  any  of  the  testimony 
which  is  transmitted  to  us.  Nor  do  I  believe  very 
greatly  in  the  efficiency  of  profit-sharing  systems  as  a 
general  means  of  preventing  labor  troubles.  Some- 

[89] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC   MORALITY 

times  they  work  well ;  oftener  they  do  not.  Plans  for 
attaching  the  laborers  to  the  corporate  service  by  pen- 
sion funds,  by  the  distribution  of  stock,  and  other  means 
of  this  kind,  are  perhaps  rather  more  promising. 
Yet  even  these  are  limited  in  their  applicability,  and 
sometimes  cause  more  unrest  than  they  prevent. 

For  the  present,  it  is  not  to  any  machinery  that  we 
must  look  for  the  solution  of  these  difficulties.  It  is 
to  a  wider  sense  of  responsibility  on  the  part  of  di- 
rectors and  general  officers.  The  man  who  selects  his 
subordinates  solely  for  their  fitness  in  making  the 
results  of  the  year's  accounts  look  best,  and  instructs 
them  to  work  for  these  results  at  the  sacrifice  of  all 
other  interests,  encourages  the  employees  to  work  for 
themselves  in  defiance  of  the  needs  either  of  the  cor- 
poration or  of  the  public,  and  does  more  than  almost 
any  professional  agitator  to  foster  the  spirit  which 
makes  labor  organizations  unreasonable  in  their  de- 
mands and  defiant  in  their  attitude.  For  the  laborers, 
like  some  of  the  rest  of  us,  are  a  good  deal  more 
affected  by  feeling  than  by  reason;  a  good  deal  more 
influenced  by  examples  than  by  syllogisms. 

[90] 


ETHICS  OF  CORPORATE  MANAGEMENT 

When  I  was  connected  with  the  Railroad  Gazette, 
we  had  occasion  to  discuss  a  strike  on  the  part  of  one 
of  the  best  of  the  labor  unions,  in  which,  contrary  to 
the  usual  practice  of  that  organization,  the  demands 
were  quite  unreasonable.  There  was  something  puz- 
zling in  the  whole  situation,  which  I  could  not  account 
for.  A  close  observer  who,  though  he  was  on  the  side 
of  the  corporation,  had  sense  enough  to  look  at  the 
facts  dispassionately,  said,  "  Do  you  know  Blank  ?  " 
naming  a  man  high  in  the  operating  department  of  the 
road  concerned.  I  said  that  I  did.  "  Blank,"  he  said, 
"is  an  honest  man.  He  is,  according  to  all  his  lights, 
an  honorable  man.  And  yet  if  Blank  were  placed 
over  me,  I  would  strike  on  any  pretext,  good  or  bad, 
just  to  show  how  I  hated  his  ways  of  doing  business. 
This  strike  is,  of  course,  an  unjustifiable  one.  For  the 
sake  of  all  concerned  it  should  be  stopped  as  soon  as 
possible,  and  your  paper  should  say  so.  But  when  the 
strike  is  over,  sail  into  the  road  with  all  your  might  for 
employing  a  man  like  Blank  in  a  position  precisely  the 
opposite  of  anything  for  which  Providence  designed 
him."  It  soon  became  evident  that  this  was  a  true 

[91] 


STANDARDS   OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

account  of  the  origin  of  the  strike.  The  company 
saw  the  situation  and  transferred  the  man,  on  its  own 
account,  to  another  post  for  which  he  was  more  fitted. 

Workmen  are  accessible  to  examples  of  loyalty,  as 
well  as  examples  of  selfishness.  One  of  our  very  large 
manufacturing  concerns  in  western  Pennsylvania  a 
few  years  ago  made  a  change  in  its  operating  head. 
Not  many  months  after  the  change  I  had  the  oppor- 
tunity to  inquire  of  a  foreman  how  things  were  working 
under  the  new  management.  "  Sir,"  was  the  reply, 
"  there  isn't  a  man  in  the  works  but  what  would  go 
straight  through  hell  with  the  new  boss  if  he  wanted  it." 
I  told  the  "  new  boss  "  the  story;  and  all  he  said  was, 
"  I  guess  they  know  that  I'd  do  the  same  for  them." 
That  was  the  voice  of  a  man  —  an  exceptional  man; 
but  what  he  really  accomplished  represents  a  kind  of 
result  which  all  of  us  will  do  well  to  keep  in  view. 

In  the  great  railroad  strikes  of  1877,  when  the 
Brotherhood  of  Locomotive  Engineers,  —  at  that  time 
a  far  less  conservatively  managed  organization  than  it 
has  since  become,  —  intoxicated  with  its  successes  in 
the  South,  ordered  a  general  tie-up  of  New  England, 

[92] 


ETHICS  OF  CORPORATE  MANAGEMENT 

the  men  of  the  New  York  &  New  England  Railroad 
met  the  order  with  a  flat  refusal.  They  had  no  other 
reason,  and  they  gave  no  other  reason,  than  their 
loyalty  to  a  man  who  was  at  that  time  a  superintendent 
of  no  particular  reputation  or  influence  outside  of  his 
own  immediate  sphere  of  duty,  —  Charles  P.  Clark, 
who  afterward  became  president  of  the  road.  That 
one  man  by  his  personality  not  only  prevented  a  general 
strike  throughout  New  England,  but  by  that  act  re- 
stored the  balance  of  industrial  force  in  the  United 
States  at  a  time  when  it  was  more  seriously  threatened 
than  it  ever  has  been  before  or  since. 

A  few  years  later,  when  a  strike  on  the  Union  Pacific 
Railroad  was  scheduled  by  the  Knights  of  Labor,  the 
president  of  that  road  prevented  the  strike  by  the 
simple  expedient  of  so  arranging  matters  that  the  re- 
sponsibility for  the  interruption  of  public  service  would 
at  each  stage  of  the  proceedings  be  clearly  put  upon  the 
labor  leaders  themselves.  If  the  company  had  been 
simply  claiming  the  right  to  serve  itself,  they  would  have 
claimed  an  equal  right  to  serve  themselves,  and  might 
very  possibly  have  had  the  sympathy  of  the  public 

[93] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC   MORALITY 

behind  them.  But  when  matters  were  so  arranged  in 
advance  that  the  responsibility  for  the  interruption 
rested  upon  their  shoulders  alone,  even  the  Knights  of 
Labor  —  and  Western  Knights  of  Labor  at  that  — 
shrank  from  taking  the  responsibility  of  a  conflict  with 
the  nation.  Of  course  strikes  will  continue  to  occur 
after  all  precautions  are  taken.  They  may  come  to 
the  man  or  the  company  that  least  deserves  it.  But 
we  can  impress  upon  the  managers  of  corporations  the 
duty  of  showing  more  solicitude  for  the  protection  of 
the  public  against  the  disastrous  results  of  the  strike 
when  it  does  come,  and  the  unwisdom  of  saying  much 
about  the  sacredness  of  the  rights  of  private  property 
under  the  Constitution  at  a  time  when  such  words  can 
only  irritate  the  employees  and  alienate  the  suffering 
public. 

There  is,  indeed,  a  sacredness  of  property  right  hi  this 
country  which  goes  far  beyond  the  letter  of  the  Con- 
stitution. The  Constitution  guarantees  that  no  man 
shall  be  deprived  of  his  property  without  due  process 
of  law ;  that  no  state  shall  pass  any  law  impairing  the 
obligation  of  contract ;  and  that  a  corporation  has  the 

[94] 


ETHICS  OF   CORPORATE  MANAGEMENT 

right  of  a  person  in  the  sense  of  being  entitled  to  fair 
and  equal  treatment.  The  conservatism  of  the  Ameri- 
can people  goes  farther  than  this.  It  supports  a  busi- 
ness man  in  the  exercise  of  his  traditional  rights,  be- 
cause it  believes,  on  the  basis  of  the  experience  of 
centuries,  that  the  exercise  of  these  rights  will  ronH^pp 
to  the  public  interests.  It  puts  the  large  industries  of 
the  country  hi  the  hands  of  corporations,  even  when 
this  results  in  creating  corporate  monopoly,  because  it 
distrusts  the  unrestricted  extension  of  government 
activity,  and  believes  that  business  is  on  the  whole 
better  handled  by  commercial  agencies  than  by  politi- 
cal ones.  But  every  case  of  failure  to  meet  public 
needs  somewhat  shakes  the  public  in  this  confidence; 
and  this  confidence  is  not  only  shaken  but  destroyed  if 
the  manager  of  a  corporation  claims  immunity  from 
interference  as  a  moral  or  constitutional  right,  inde- 
pendent of  the  public  interests  involved. 

Personally,  I  am  one  of  those  who  look  with  serious 
distrust  on  each  extension  of  political  activity.  I 
believe  that  the  interstate  commerce  law  did  more  to 
prevent  wise  railroad  regulation  than  any  other  event 

[95] 


STANDARDS   OF  PUBLIC   MORALITY 

in  the  history  of  the  country.  I  think  that  the  courts 
would  have  dealt  with  our  industrial  problems  better 
than  they  have  done  if  the  anti-trust  act  had  never 
been  passed.  I  have  gravely  doubted  the  wisdom  of 
some  of  the  more  recent  measures  passed  by  the  national 
government.  But  I  cannot  shut  my  eyes  to  the  fact 
that  these  things  are  what  business  men  must  expect 
unless  business  ethics  is  somewhat  modified  to  meet 
existing  conditions.  Industrial  corporations  grew  up 
into  power  because  they  met  the  needs  of  the  past.  To 
stay  in  power,  they  must  meet  the  needs  of  the  present, 
and  arrange  their  ethics  accordingly.  If  they  can  do  it 
by  their  own  voluntary  development  of  the  sense  of 
trusteeship,  that  is  the  simplest  and  best  solution.  But 
if  not,  one  of  two  things  will  happen:  vastly  increased 
legal  regulation,  or  state  ownership  of  monopolies. 
Those  who  fear  the  effects  of  increased  government 
activity  must  prove  by  their  acceptance  of  ethical 
duties  to  the  public  that  they  are  not  blind  devotees  of 
an  industrial  past  which  has  ceased  to  exist,  but  are 
preparing  to  accept  the  heavier  burdens  and  obligations 

which  the  industrial  present  carries  with  it. 

[96] 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  WORKINGS  OF  OUR  POLITICAL 
MACHINERY 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  WORKINGS  OF  OUR  POLITICAL 
MACHINERY 

WHEN  a  young  man  starts  out  in  life,  he  will 
always  find  a  great  many  excellent  people  ad- 
vising him  to  go  into  politics.  In  order  that 
this  advice  may  be  good  advice,  one  important  word 
needs  to  be  added.  He  should  be  told  to  go  into 
politics  intelligently.  Many  of  the  people  who  give 
the  advice  think  that  the  going  is  the  main  thing,  and 
that  the  intelligence  will  take  care  of  itself.  This  is  a 
rather  widespread  mistake.  I  received  not  long  ago 
a  most  charming  letter  from  a  lady  of  a  good  deal  of 
experience  in  philanthropic  work,  in  which  she  said 
that  the  great  danger  under  which  the  country  suffered 
was  the  disinclination  of  educated  men  to  take  office. 
I  was  obliged  to  answer  that  I  had  not  as  a  rule  noticed 
any  such  disinclination.  Educated  American  citizens, 
like  American  citizens  of  every  other  class,  are  as  a 

[99] 


STANDARDS   OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

rule  quite  ready  to  accept  any  important  public  office 
which  their  fellow-countrymen  may  be  willing  to  in- 
trust to  their  charge.  The  question  is  whether  they 
are  willing  to  take  the  preliminary  steps  necessary  for 
getting  elected.  I  have  grave  doubts  whether  the  lady 
who  was  so  urgent  in  advising  educated  men  to  take 
office  would  have  been  prepared  in  the  majority  of 
cases  to  recommend  the  means  by  which  they  might 
most  surely  obtain  it.  When  a  conscientious  and 
honorable  man  tries  to  exercise  political  influence,  he 
usually  finds  himself  face  to  face  with  the  necessity 
of  some  disagreeable  compromises.  To  secure  an 
office  which  will  enable  him  to  accomplish  anything, 
he  frequently  has  to  shut  his  eyes  to  a  number  of  prac- 
tices which  he  knows  to  be  bad ;  and  he  sometimes  has 
to  place  himself  in  a  position  where  he  seems  to  ap- 
prove of  them  by  his  toleration.  Under  these  circum- 
stances the  man  who  goes  into  politics  indiscriminately, 
without  the  exercise  of  a  good  deal  of  judgment,  is 
apt  either  to  abandon  it  very  quickly  or  to  find  himself 
forced  into  a  somewhat  different  position  from  that 
which  he  intended  at  the  start.  "I  can  get  medicine 

[100] 


WORKINGS  OF  OUR  POLITICAL  MACHINERY 

into  a  patient  easily  enough,"  said  a  wise  physician; 
"  but  heaven  knows  how  to  get  it  out."  This  argument 
against  the  indiscriminate  practice  of  medicine  holds 
equally  good,  I  think,  against  the  indiscriminate  practice 
of  politics. 

In  the  earlier  lectures  we  discussed  some  of  the 
underlying  ideas  on  which  the  present  industrial 
system  is  based.  I  purpose  in  this  lecture  to  try  to 

do  the  same  thing  for  our  political  system ;  to  examine 

* 

the  relation  between  existing  methods  of  government 
and  the  historical  conditions  which  have  called  them 
forth;  to  see  what  are  the  practical  limitations  under 
which  we  necessarily  act  when  we  go  into  politics, 
and  what  are  the  practical  possibilities  for  improving 
the  general  condition  of  the  country  which  lie  ahead 
of  us. 

Our  political  organization  is  more  complex  than 
our  industrial  organization,  and  it  is  more  difficult  to 
make  a  brief  history  which  shall  single  out  its  main  lines 
of  development  and  separate  them  from  the  mass  of 
details  by  which  they  are  surrounded.  The  chief 
questions  which  I  want  to  consider  are  connected  with 

[101] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

the  origin  and  actual  working  of  representative  gov- 
ernment in  the  United  States.  How  far  has  this  system 
fulfilled  the  purposes  of  those  who  established  it  ?  How 
well  does  it  meet  the  needs  of  the  country  as  it  stands 
at  present?  What  unforeseen  consequences  has  it 
brought  in  its  train?  You  must  pardon  me  if,  in 
this  discussion,  I  seem  to  omit  many  things  which  ap- 
pear of  importance,  and  content  myself  with  inadequate 
proof  of  some  of  the  propositions  advanced.  The 
theme  is  so  vast  that  we  can  only  deal  with  its  main 
principles. 

Our  state  constitutions  and  our  national  Constitu- 
tion were  chiefly  based  upon  English  experience.  It 
is  true  that  the  men  who  framed  them  had  generally  read 
the  Greek  and  Latin  classics,  and  that  some  of  them 
were  familiar  with  the  more  recent  history  of  France  or 
of  Holland ;  but  their  real  working  experience  had  been 
with  English  law  and  English  traditions.  In  England 
from  the  thirteenth  to  the  eighteenth  century  they  had 
seen  a  contest  of  a  king  on  the  one  side,  striving  to 
get  centralized  power  into  his  own  hands,  and  a  Par- 
liament on  the  other  side,  striving  to  restrict  that  power 

[102] 


WORKINGS  OF  OUR  POLITICAL  MACHINERY 

in  the  interests  of  national  freedom.  This  Parlia- 
ment was  what  its  name  implied  —  a  place  for  parleys 
and  discussions,  wherein  the  public  opinion  of  the 
country  could  be  developed  and  formulated.  Unless 
the  king  gave  opportunity  for  such  discussion,  the 
people  would  not  pay  him  the  taxes  which  he  needed  for 
carrying  out  his  projects  of  ambition  in  foreign  lands. 
By  its  debates  Parliament  held  up  to  odium  the  tyran- 
nical acts  of  a  king  which  might  otherwise  have  es- 
caped notice,  and  united  public  sentiment  on  a  great 
many  matters  in  which  otherwise  it  would  have  re- 
mained disunited  and  powerless.  All  its  legislative 
functions  were  of  comparatively  slight  importance  as 
compared  with  this  power  to  educate  public  opinion, 
and  thus  protect  the  nation  against  tyranny. 

In  the  government  of  our  colonies  and  states,  and 
still  more  clearly  in  the  national  Constitution,  American 
publicists  tried  to  reproduce  as  closely  as  possible  the 
English  Parliament  in  its  functions.  They  were 
afraid  that  a  president  or  governor  might  strive  to 
become  a  monarch.  They  therefore  hedged  him  about 
with  representative  assemblies.  As  England  had  her 

[103] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

Lords  and  her  Commons,  so  the  various  American 
legislatures  —  national,  state,  and  municipal  —  had 
their  upper  and  their  lower  chambers.  In  one  re- 
spect only  did  American  legislatures  differ  widely  from 
that  of  the  mother  country.  Representation  in  an 
English  Parliament  had  been  a  somewhat  haphazard 
affair.  The  Lords  represented  only  themselves.  The 
Commons  represented  but  a  very  small  part  of  the 
English  people.  If  the  discussions  in  Parliament 
reflected  the  popular  voices  outside,  it  seemed  more  a 
matter  of  happy  accident  than  of  logical  necessity. 
But  in  America  the  assemblies  were  made  really  rep- 
resentative, instead  of  nominally  so.  The  districts 
which  chose  members  of  the  legislative  assembly  were 
made  as  nearly  equal  in  numbers  as  the  circumstances 
admitted;  and  this  fact,  coupled  with  the  system  of 
universal  suffrage,  seemed  likely  to  make  Congress  and 
the  various  state  legislatures  express  the  popular  wishes 
and  popular  demands  more  adequately  than  the  Eng- 
lish Parliament  had  ever  done. 

But  in  the  course  of  the  first  century  of  our  existence 
two  or  three  developments  took  place  which,  without 

[104] 


WORKINGS  OF  OUR  POLITICAL  MACHINERY 

changing  the  form  of  our  Constitution,  made  a  very 
great  change  in  its  practical  workings.  Chief  among 
these  was  the  invention  of  better  means  of  communi- 
cation, particularly  the  telegraph ;  and  the  consequent 
growth  of  the  newspaper  press  as  a  forum  of  public 
discussion.  At  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century 
Parliaments  and  Congresses  had  been  the  places  where 
public  opinion  was  formed.  In  the  middle  of  the 
nineteenth  this  was  still  partly  true.  But  at  the  end 
of  the  nineteenth  it  had  become  practically  untrue. 
Newspapers  have  appropriated  this  function  of  Par- 
liaments and  Congresses.  Parliamentary  debate  has 
not  the  influence  which  it  had  in  the  days  of  Madison 
and  Hamilton,  or  even  in  the  days  of  Webster  and  Clay 
and  Calhoun.  People  no  longer  send  their  represen- 
tatives to  Congress  to  tell  what  has  happened  in  their 
districts,  and  await  with  eagerness  the  return  of  those 
representatives  to  know  what  other  people  think  about 
it.  The  telegraph  has  published  the  facts  months 
before  the  legislature  convenes.  The  press  has  dis- 
cussed the  bearings  of  those  facts  in  every  aspect. 
Assemblies  that  were  once  "deliberative"  have  ceased 

[105] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

to  be  so,  because  all  the  deliberation  has  been  done 
before  they  meet. 

The  first  body  to  be  affected  by  this  change  was  the 
electoral  college.  The  framers  of  the  Constitution 
expected  that  citizens  of  different  states  would  choose 
electors,  and  that  these  electors  would  meet  and  discuss 
who  were  the  best  men  for  president  and  vice  president. 
But  the  people  soon  began  to  have  ideas  of  their  own 
as  to  whom  they  wanted  for  these  offices.  They  bound 
their  electors  by  instructions  in  advance.  The  members 
of  the  electoral  college  were  simply  charged  with  the 
duty  of  registering  a  decision  already  made,  not  of  con- 
tributing to  the  formation  of  a  new  one.  A  simi- 
lar change  took  place  in  the  functions  of  Congress 
—  more  slowly,  because  it  is  not  so  easy  to  instruct 
your  representative  concerning  his  vote  on  the  dif- 
ferent measures  which  may  come  up  as  on  his  choice 
of  candidates  for  specified  offices  —  but  nevertheless, 
as  the  years  went  on,  unmistakably  and  surely.  The 
people  who  went  to  Congress  a  century  ago  were  sent  to 
inform  themselves  concerning  public  needs,  with  a  view 
of  arriving  at  a  common  understanding.  The  people 

[106] 


WORKINGS  OF  OUR  POLITICAL  MACHINERY 

who  are  sent  to  Congress  to-day  go  under  instructions 
from  their  representatives,  with  a  view  of  securing 
a  strong  majority  for  those  views,  if  they  can,  or  a 
vociferous  minority,  if  that  is  the  best  that  may  be 
done. 

All  this  has  been  clearly  enough  recognized.  But 
one  very  important  fact  in  connection  with  it  which 
has  not  been  recognized  is  a  resulting  change  in  the 
conception  as  to  what  congressional  legislation  really 
means.  The  old  theory  was  that  Congress  should 
try  to  arrive  by  its  debates  as  nearly  as  possible  at  a 
common  understanding  of  what  was  for  the  interests 
of  the  country.  To  form  public  opinion  was  the  first 
duty;  to  give  effect  to  that  public  opinion  by  statute 
the  incidental  one.  But  the  present  theory  is  that 
Congress  should  enact  whatever  a  majority  of  both 
Houses  may  desire,  without  even  trying  to  secure  a 
common  understanding.  To-day  the  effort  of  each 
legislator  is  to  get  a  majority  in  favor  of  a  bill  that  suits 
his  party  or  district,  and  let  the  rights  or  wishes  of  other 
parties  or  districts  take  care  of  themselves.  Statute  law, 
under  this  changed  view,  is  no  longer  an  expression 

[107] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

of  the  public  opinion  of  the  whole  country.  It  is  an 
enactment  by  the  representatives  of  a  part  of  the 
country  of  the  things  which  they  deem  for  the  interests 
of  their  constituents,  subject  only  to  the  restrictions 
which  will  be  imposed  by  the  courts. 

This  change  has  had  far-reaching  effects,  both  on  our 
conception  of  law  and  on  our  methods  of  government. 

The  first  and  obvious  effect  is  that  a  great  deal  more 
statute  law  is  enacted  under  the  new  system  than  was 
possible  under  the  old.  It  is  far  easier  to  get  a  majority 
to  agree  concerning  their  interests  than  to  get  anything 
like  a  consensus  of  opinion  as  to  what  is  the  interest 
of  the  whole  people.  This  increase  in  quantity  of 
legislation,  however,  has  been  accompanied  by  a  loss 
in  efficiency  of  legislation.  There  are  more  statutes, 
but  they  are  not  so  well  enforced. 

Some  of  them  are  not  enforced  at  all.  When  law 
represents  public  opinion  concerning  what  is  needed 
for  the  public,  its  enforcement  takes  care  of  itself. 
But  when  law  represents  what  a  number  of  individuals 
deem  to  be  for  their  own  interest,  members  of  the 
minority  who  are  hurt  by  the  enactment  cannot  be 

[108] 


WORKINGS  OF  OUR  POLITICAL  MACHINERY 

expected  to  take  very  active  measures  in  its  support. 
If  such  a  law  too  outrageously  violates  their  sense  of 
justice,  they  will  sometimes  put  obstacles  in  the  way 
of  its  enforcement ;  and  when  any  considerable  num- 
ber of  good  men  treat  a  statute  in  this  way,  its 
efficiency  is  at  an  end.  A  law  can  be  enforced  against 
the  opposition  of  bad  men,  because  the  bad  men  do 
not  count  for  much  in  the  support  of  any  law  whatever. 
It  cannot  be  enforced  in  the  face  of  the  active  oppo- 
sition of  a  considerable  number  of  good  men,  because 
the  thing  that  makes  law  effective  is  the  readiness  of 
good  men  to  support  it.  A  majority  of  the  legislature 
has  an  apparent  power  to  enact  what  it  pleases,  within 
the  very  wide  limits  set  by  the  Constitution ;  but  many 
a  statute  passed  under  such  circumstances,  though 
drafted  with  the  utmost  care  and  possessing  all  the 
external  characteristics  of  a  good  law,  is  destitute  of 
the  public  backing  which  is  needed  to  give  it  vitality. 

A  five-year-old  boy  that  I  heard  about  came  to  his 
mother  carrying  a  dead  cat  by  the  tail,  and  laid  it  at 
her  feet  with  the  indignant  expression,  "Mamma, 
here's  a  perfectly  good  cat  that  I  found  thrown  away 

[109] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

in  the  ash  barrel."  The  statute  books  of  our  country 
are  full  of  these  perfectly  good  cats  thrown  away  in 
the  ash  barrel  —  cats  which  possessed  a  head  and 
tail  and  four  paws,  but  which  lacked  the  internal  force 
necessary  to  give  them  life. 

All  this  mass  of  selfish  statutes  inadequately  enforced 
produces  a  certain  contempt  for  law  and  legislation 
which  is  bad  for  the  interests  of  democratic  government. 
But  there  is  another  set  of  results,  and  perhaps  an  even 
worse  set,  which  come  about  when  a  law  has  enough 
strength  behind  it  to  be  more  or  less  fully  enforced,  but 
has  been  conceived  in  such  a  partisan  spirit  that  its 
working  is  resolutely  contested  by  all  the  technical 
means  which  the  courts  allow. 

It  will  frequently  happen  that  a  law  designed  to 
meet  a  public  need  is  so  ill  drawn  that  in  trying  to 
remedy  one  injustice  it  produces  another,  or  that  in 
trying  to  meet  the  demands  of  new  conditions  it  does 
violence  to  well-recognized  rights  created  in  the  past. 
The  courts  examine  situations  of  this  kind.  If  the 
injustice  occurs  only  in  a  few  individual  cases,  they  can 
give  relief  to  those  individuals.  If  it  is  widespread, 

[110] 


WORKINGS  OF  OUR  POLITICAL  MACHINERY 

they  either  construe  the  law  out  of  existence  or  declare 
it  to  be  unconstitutional.  They  exercise  an  efficient 
and  necessary  protection  of  the  rights  of  the  minority. 
The  law  as  expounded  by  the  courts  has  certain  very 
considerable  advantages  over  the  law  as  drafted  by  the 
legislature.  In  the  first  place,  judge-made  law  is  the 
work  of  experts,  instead  of  that  of  amateurs.,  It  is  the 
work  of  men  who  know  by  long  professional  experience 
what  will  be  the  result  of  compelling  people  to  do  certain 
things,  or  to  leave  undone  certain  other  things.  Another 
advantage  that  the  courts  have  over  the  legislatures 
is  that  their  decisions  are,  in  theory  at  least,  based  on 
a  consensus  of  opinion  concerning  the  public  interest, 
rather  than  a  majority  vote  concerning  private  interests 
or  opinions.  Good  law,  according  to  the  old  theory, 
is  good  common  sense,  set  forth  by  judges  of  high 
character  and  long  professional  training  in  such  fashion 
as  to  command  general  acquiescence,  first  among  other 
men  similarly  trained,  and  next  among  the  whole 
community. 

In  old  days  this  aspect  of  the  matter  was  strongly 
emphasized   by  lawyers   and   statesmen.     Nothing  is 

[111] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

more  noticeable  in  the  opinions  of  the  English  judges 
of  earlier  centuries  than  the  clearness  with  which  they 
made  the  reasons  for  their  actions  intelligible  to  a  man 
who  would  take  the  trouble  to  study  them.  These 
reasons  may  not  always  commend  themselves  to  our 
judgment  to-day;  but  such  as  they  were,  they  were 
plainly  and  fearlessly  set  forth.  Besides  this  educational 
character  of  the  judicial  decisions  in  earlier  times, 
there  appears  to  have  been  a  general  acceptance  of  the 
duty  of  jury  service  by  good  men  —  and  I  may  add, 
an  administration  of  the  law  which  made  it  more  gen- 
erally possible  for  good  men  to  accept  jury  service  than 
is  the  case  to-day.  The  jurors  who  took  part  in  these 
old-fashioned  trials  received  a  practical  education  in 
applying  good  legal  principles  to  concrete  cases;  and 
they  got  an  understanding  of  these  principles  which 
they  carried  into  many  other  lines  of  activity,  public 
and  private. 

To-day  all  these  things  have  changed.  In  a  large 
part  of  our  country  a  man  who  serves  on  a  jury  in  a 
state  court  is  not  allowed  to  get  any  idea  of  proper  rules 
of  evidence  or  of  proper  principles  of  law.  He  is  made 

[112] 


WORKINGS  OF  OUR  POLITICAL  MACHINERY 

to  take  a  month  to  transact  business  the  wrong  way 
which,  if  handled  in  the  right  way,  could  have  been 
finished  in  half  a  week.  His  time  and  intelligence  are 
placed  at  the  mercy  of  criminal  —  and  often  exceedingly 
criminal  —  lawyers.  We  have  been  told  that  one  im- 
portant function  of  the  jury  system  is  to  prevent  the 
administration  of  the  law  from  being  too  good  for  the 
people  who  live  under  it.  But  it  makes  a  great  dif- 
ference whether  this  result  is  obtained  by  educating 
the  people  up  to  the  level  of  the  law,  or  by  bringing  the 
execution  of  the  law  down  to  the  level  of  the  unedu- 
cated intelligence  of  the  people.  The  former  was  the 
old  way  —  the  way  that  still  prevails  in  England,  and, 
speaking  broadly,  in  the  Federal  courts  of  the  United 
States.  The  latter  is  the  practice  which  seems  to  pre- 
vail in  most  of  the  state  courts  west  of  the  Alleghany 
Mountains. 

For  the  loss  of  their  authority  to  protect  the  jury 
against  the  improper  artifices  and  unnecessary  delays 
of  unscrupulous  counsel,  the  judges  cannot  be  fairly 
criticised.  It  is  the  legislatures  of  the  country,  carrying 
to  an  unwarranted  extreme  the  theory  of  giving  the 
i  [  113  ] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

prisoner  at  the  bar  every  possible  chance  in  his  favor, 
that  are  responsible  for  making  jury  trials  a  mere  par- 
ody of  what  they  once  were.  But  for  the  loss  of  their 
influence  on  public  opinion  as  a  whole  our  judges  them- 
selves are  to  a  considerable  degree  to  blame.  They  have 
stopped  explaining  the  reasons  for  their  decisions  and 
have  fallen  back  too  much  on  mere  citations  of  prece- 
dent. They  support  their  views,  not  by  the  authority 
of  common  sense,  but  by  the  authority  of  office.  They 
say  that  law  derives  its  compelling  force,  not  from  the  fact 
that  it  is  consonant  with  reason,  but  from  the  fact  that 
it  has  been  prnnmilgfffpH  in  a  certain  specified  way; 
and  that  it  is  their  plain  duty  to  consider,  not  whether 
a  thing  is  sensible,  but  whether  it  is  regular.  This  is 
one  of  those  half  truths  which  can  do  a  great  deal  of 
harm  if  improperly  applied.  We  saw  last  week  how 
the  rights  of  corporate  property  had  been  held  sacred 
primarily  because  they  had  been  used  in  a  manner  which 
was  on  the  whole  beneficial  to  the  community;  but 
that  if  a  manager  under  certain  circumstances  said  so 
much  about  the  sacredness  of  his  right  that  he  lost 
sight  of  the  question  whether  he  was  using  it  benefi- 

[114] 


WORKINGS  OF  OUR  POLITICAL  MACHINERY 

cially,  he  endangered  the  continuance  of  that  right  itself. 
In  like  manner  the  regular  utterances  of  the  courts  have 
been  accepted  as  law  because  the  nation  recognized 
them  as  sensible;  but  when  the  courts  claim  to  make 
regularity  the  test  of  law,  independent  of  the  question 
of  sense,  they  undermine  the  public  confidence  which  is 
necessary  for  the  successful  exercise  of  their  authority. 
This  process  has  already  gone  to  a  dangerous  length. 
When  the  question  of  the  construction  or  the  constitu- 
tionality of  an  Act  is  brought  up  in  the  courts,  the  public 
regards  the  matter  in  the  light  of  a  contest  between  a 
majority  exercising  its  political  powers  on  the  one  hand, 
and  a  minority  standing  upon  its  technical  rights  on 
the  other  hand.  It  is  a  game  of  politics  versus  precedent, 
with  the  Constitution  as  umpire.  The  public  does  not 
regard  the  statute  as  passed  by  the  legislature,  or  the 
precedent  as  interpreted  by  the  courts,  as  representing 
in  either  case  any  general  public  sentiment.  Nor  is  it 
easy  to  see  why  it  should.  The  legislatures  for  the  most 
part  frankly  admit  that  they  are  striving  to  advance 
the  claims  of  the  majority  by  all  practicable  means. 
The  courts  claim  to  represent,  and  in  a  certain  sense 

[115] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

do  represent,  organized  public  opinion;  but  they  dis- 
card as  inconsistent  with  modern  professional  traditions 
the  means  which  lie  at  their  hand  for  keeping  that 
public  opinion  behind  them  by  giving  the  reasons  for 
their  acts.  It  is  hard  to  guess  what  will  become  of  our 
old  ideas  of  the  sacredness  of  law  if  this  condition  of 
things  is  allowed  to  go  on  indefinitely. 

Meantime  the  new  theory  of  representative  govern- 
ment has  had  effects  on  practical  politics  scarcely 
less  fundamental  than  those  which  it  has  had  upon  law. 
A  number  of  congressmen  go  to  Washington  pledged 
to  act  in  the  interests  of  those  who  sent  them.  This 
pledge  is  not  an  explicit  one.  There  will  always  be 
men  who  disregard  it  in  certain  emergencies,  and  who 
prefer  the  higher  claims  of  the  country  to  the  lower 
claims  of  the  party  or  district.  But  these  cases  will 
be  relatively  few.  When  Mr.  Lamar  of  Mississippi 
voted  for  the  gold  standard  in  1878  because  he  was  con- 
vinced that  the  country  needed  it,  although  his  con- 
stituents thought  that  a  silver  standard  was  better, 
it  excited  universal  comment  and  considerable  con- 
demnation. Many  men  who  admit  in  theory  that 

[116] 


WORKINGS  OF  OUR  POLITICAL  MACHINERY 

their  duty  to  the  country  is  greater  and  more  important 
than  their  duty  to  their  constituents  disclaim  their 
responsibility  for  putting  this  theory  in  practice.  They 
say  frankly  that  while  our  government  would  be  a 
better  one  if  everybody  recognized  that  principle, 
it  will  only  introduce  confusion  and  injustice  to-day 
if  a  few  good  people  work  for  the  benefit  of  the  nation 
while  a  great  many  people  who  are  not  so  good  have 
only  the  claims  of  the  party  or  the  district  in  view. 
They  hold  that  the  selfishness  of  a  number  of  sections 
of  the  country,  each  pulling  in  its  own  way,  will  produce 
a  fairly  salutary  general  result  for  the  country  as  a 
whole.  Equity  between  the  different  parts  becomes 
in  their  minds  a  more  prominent  consideration  than 
the  general  interests  or  safety  of  the  whole,  which  they 
are  willing  to  trust  Providence  to  take  care  of.  They 
are  in  the  mental  attitude  of  the  little  girl  who  saw  a 
picture  of  Daniel  in  the  lion's  den,  and  whose  sym- 
pathies were  excited,  not  so  much  by  the  danger  or 
probable  fate  of  the  prophet,  as  by  the  disadvantageous 
position  of  a  little  lion  in  the  corner  who,  as  she  said, 
probably  wouldn't  get  anything. 

[117] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

This  is  a  false  way  of  looking  at  things ;  but  it  is  very 
widespread.  It  represents  one  of  those  unwarranted 
inferences  from  the  doctrine  of  competition  of  which  I 
spoke  two  weeks  ago.  If  a  number  of  different  persons 
are  trying  to  serve  the  public  treasury  in  their  own  way, 
it  is  wise  to  let  them  all  do  it,  and  see  which  way  is  best. 
But  if  those  same  persons  are  trying  to  serve  themselves 
in  their  own  way,  at  the  expense  of  the  public  treasury, 
the  case  is  totally  different.  The  element  of  benefit 
to  the  treasury,  which  is  so  conspicuously  present  in 
the  case  of  real  competition,  is  conspicuously  absent 
in  the  case  of  conflicts  and  compromises  between  the 
representatives  of  different  districts  in  drafting  an  ap- 
propriation bill  or  in  laying  claim  for  a  share  of  public 
offices. 

To  many  a  representative  who  goes  to  Congress,  this 
work  of  getting  appropriations  and  offices  for  his  dis- 
trict becomes  the  main  part  of  his  duty,  for  whose  sake 
he  can  neglect  many  other  parts  which  are  really  more 
important.  The  worst  of  it  is  that  his  constituents 
support  him  in  that  view.  Where  this  kind  of  ethics 
prevails  the  kind  of  government  which  our  fathers 

[118] 


WORKINGS  OF  OUR  POLITICAL  MACHINERY 

intended  is  impossible.  The  legislature  not  only  fails 
of  its  primary  purpose  in  making  the  right  kind  of  laws, 
but  perverts  its  secondary  purpose  by  exercising  the 
wrong  kind  of  checks  upon  the  administration.  When 
people  countenance  this  way  of  looking  at  things,  a 
representative  can  exact  a  price  for  his  support  of  the 
administration  on  a  matter  of  public  interest;  and  the 
more  the  public  interest  is  concerned  in  the  passage 
of  the  measure,  the  higher  the  price  he  can  charge. 
The  power  of  the  executive  in  the  nation,  in  our  states, 
and  in  many  of  our  cities,  is  made  dependent  upon  the 
consent  of  a  majority  of  the  legislative  body  by  which 
he  is  surrounded.  This  consent  was  originally  required 
because  our  fathers,  having  the  experience  of  England 
fresh  in  their  minds,  were  afraid  that  an  executive 
might  seek  tyrannical  power,  and  they  wanted  to  bring 
the  restraints  of  public  opinion  to  bear  upon  him  from 
every  possible  quarter.  But  things  have  now  taken 
such  shape  that  the  representatives,  instead  of  using 
public  opinion  to  prevent  the  executive  from  acting 
selfishly,  use  their  own  power  selfishly  to  prevent  the 
executive  from  doing  what  public  opinion  demands, 

[119] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

until  he  satisfies  the  local  and  personal  claims  of  the 
districts  which  they  represent.  Does  the  President 
want  to  name  the  best  man  for  a  judgeship?  Con- 
firmation is  refused  because  the  appointment  is  not 
acceptable  to  a  certain  number  of  senators  essential 
to  a  majority.  Does  the  governor  wish  to  choose  the 
best  men  for  a  state  commission  ?  He  is  told  frankly 
that  it  is  not  a  question  of  the  best  man;  that  if 
a  commission  is  to  be  authorized  at  all,  there  must  be 
one  from  White  county,  and  one  from  Green  county, 
and  one  from  Black  county.  Under  our  existing  system 
of  representative  government  the  parts  have  it  in  their 
power  to  exact  a  price  for  not  standing  in  the  way  of 
the  interests  of  the  whole.  In  the  old  days  people 
sent  representatives  to  Parliament  in  order  to  insure 
that  the  injury  of  one  might  be  the  concern  of  all. 
To-day  we  have  so  changed  the  underlying  principle 
of  the  system  that  the  concern  of  one  is  made  the  injury 
of  all. 

The  bad  politics  resulting  from  this  perversion  of 
representative  government  have  been  even  harder  to 
deal  with  than  the  bad  laws.  For  the  power  of  making 

[120] 


WORKINGS  OF  OUR  POLITICAL  MACHINERY 

bad  laws  can  be,  and  has  been,  restrained.  A  large 
majority  of  our  states,  seeing  the  chaos  which  results 
from  indiscriminate  legislation  without  expert  knowl- 
edge, have  either  passed  state  constitutions  taking  out 
of  the  hands  of  the  legislature  the  power  of  making 
any  laws,  good  or  bad,  on  really  important  subjects, 
or  they  have  had  the  mass  of  old  state  statutes  codified 
by  experts  who  exercise  such  large  powers  of  rejection 
and  choice  that  the  existing  laws  maybe  said  to  have  been 
the  work  of  the  codification  committee  rather  than  of  a 
legislature  or  series  of  legislatures.  But  every  restriction 
of  the  law-making  power  of  a  representative  assembly, 
however  salutary  in  itself,  leaves  the  hands  of  the  rep- 
resentative freer  for  selfish  or  sectional  activity  hi  other 
directions.  If  he  is  not  sent  to  the  capital  to  make  laws, 
what  is  he  there  for?  What,  indeed,  unless  it  be  to 
get  appropriations  for  his  district  and  offices  for  his 
friends?  If  he  cannot  do  his  constitutional  duty 
in  making  the  laws  that  the  people  want,  what  other 
constitutional  duty  is  left  to  him  except  that  of  prevent- 
big  the  executive  from  having  an  unrestricted  use  of 
its  personal  judgment  in  the  government  of  the  country  ? 

[121] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

The  more  we  cut  off  a  representative  assembly  from  its 
primary  duty  of  legislation,  the  more  we  throw  upon  it 
the  work  of  hampering  the  administration. 

I  use  the  word  "  hampering  "  advisedly.  If  a  man 
is  chosen  President  to  govern  the  country  as  a  whole, 
and  a  number  of  men  are  sent  to  Congress  to  see  that 
the  country  is  not  governed  as  a  whole,  but  with  a  view 
to  the  interests  of  the  separate  parts,  there  is  a  perpetual 
threat  of  a  deadlock.  Exactly  the  same  thing  holds 
good  regarding  the  relations  of  a  governor  to  a  state 
legislature,  or  a  mayor  to  a  court  of  common  council. 
Government  is  made  impossible  without  the  concur- 
rence of  a  man  who  is  instructed  to  act  on  one  set  of 
principles,  and  a  board  of  representatives  which  thinks 
it  is  instructed  to  act  on  a  different  set  of  principles. 
There  will  always  be  differences  of  opinion  between  the 
two.  There  will  habitually  be  a  deadlock  unless  some 
power  is  found  to  bring  the  two  into  harmony.  The 
Constitution  of  the  United  States,  and  those  of  most 
of  our  states,  have  made  it  impossible  for  the  work  of 
government  to  be  done  except  by  agreement  between 
two  sets  of  agents  who  are  bound  to  disagree. 

[122] 


WORKINGS  OF  OUR  POLITICAL  MACHINERY 

But  the  country  must  be  governed,  and  somebody 
must  be  found  to  do  it.  The  President  may  not  do 
it.  That  stands  hi  the  Constitution.  Congress  may 
not.  That  also  stands  in  the  Constitution.  The  only 
man  left  to  do  it  under  present  conditions  is  the  party 
boss.  The  Constitution  never  thought  about  him  at 
all,  and  therefore  it  did  not  prohibit  his  activity.  The 
Constitution  so  regulated  the  machinery  of  election 
that  the  elected  officers  would  not  work  hi  harmony 
except  by  a  happy  accident.  There  was  no  guarantee 
against  a  complete  deadlock.  But  the  Constitution 
did  not  regulate  the  machinery  of  nomination.  If  a 
man  gets  the  power  to  control  nominations  both  for  the 
executive  and  for  the  legislature,  he  can  furnish  gov- 
ernment of  the  kind  he  wants,  either  good  or  bad.  For 
he  can  under  all  ordinary  circumstances  refuse  to  nomi- 
nate either  an  executive  officer  or  a  district  represen- 
tative who  will  not  work  in  harmony  with  his  orders. 
In  the  United  States  as  it  is  at  the  present  day  the 
party  machinery  has  appeared  to  be  a  necessity  for 
getting  the  work  of  government  done  continuously  and 

regularly. 

[123] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

We  know  this  well  enough  in  fact.  We  know  that 
if  any  important  measure  needs  to  be  carried  through, 
the  essential  thing  to  do  is  to  secure  the  consent  of  the 
leaders  of  the  dominant  party.  If  this  is  done,  all  goes 
well.  If  not,  it  is  blocked  by  all  sorts  of  unexpected 
obstacles.  But  we  are  too  apt  to  consider  this  state  of 
things  a  mere  accident  —  to  think  that  if  we  only  talk 
enough  against  parties,  and  form  enough  sporadic  in- 
dependent movements,  we  can  do  away  with  it.  This  is 
an  error.  Parties  are  much  too  firmly  established  to 
be  done  away  with  in  this  easy  manner.  The  power  of 
party  leaders  —  call  them  statesmen  or  call  them  bosses, 
as  you  please  —  is  more  securely  intrenched  than  most 
of  us  realize.  It  is  a  price  which  we  pay  for  certain 
safeguards  to  civil  liberty  incorporated  in  the  Constitu- 
tion of  the  United  States.  We  can  hope,  if  we  study 
real  conditions  carefully  enough,  to  pass  certain  laws 
which  will  lessen  the  power  of  party  leaders  for  evil. 
We  can,  if  we  go  to  work  rightly,  develop  changes  in 
our  political  ethics  which  shall  lay  the  foundation  for 
still  further  reform.  But  taking  the  facts  as  we  find 
them,  with  our  existing  Constitution  of  the  United 

[1*4] 


WORKINGS  OF  OUR  POLITICAL  MACHINERY 

States  as  it  stands,  and  with  our  present  system  of 
political  ethics,  the  party,  working  by  extra-constitu- 
tional if  not  anti-constitutional  means,  is  the  only 
practical  agency  for  getting  the  country  governed  at  all. 

I  do  not  mean  that  the  provisions  of  the  American 
Constitution  have  caused  political  parties  to  come  into 
being.  They  have  simply  caused  them  to  assume  an 
undue  and  unnatural  prominence.  Parties  will  always 
exist  where  one  set  of  men  wants  one  set  of  measures 
and  another  set  wants  another.  Each  group  will 
organize  for  the  purpose  of  securing  its  end.  Each 
group  will  find  it  advantageous  to  have  a  good  deal  of 
political  machinery  at  its  command.  The  peculiar 
thing  about  American  parties  is  that  the  passage  of 
certain  legislative  measures  is  not  the  chief  purpose  of 
their  existence.  It  is  a  mere  incident.  The  important 
purpose  of  an  American  party  is  to  govern  the  country. 
The  legislative  proposals  which  it  incorporates  in  its 
platform  are  chosen  as  a  means  of  attracting  a  few  more 
votes  to  keep  the  party  leaders  in  office. 

Of  course  there  have  been  exceptions  to  this  rule  at 
various  times  in  our  history.  The  democratic  party 

[125] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

before  the  war  was  so  attached  to  the  constitutional 
principle  of  state  rights  that  its  leaders  would  rather  lose 
office  than  sacrifice  that  principle.  The  republican 
party  at  the  time  of  the  Civil  War  was  so  committed  to 
the  principle  of  slavery  restriction  that  its  leaders  would 
have  stayed  out  of  office  as  a  means  of  securing  that 
end,  rather  than  go  into  office  at  the  price  of  neglecting 
it.  But  looking  over  the  general  history  of  the  coun- 
try, we  are  reminded  forcibly  of  the  experience  of  Mr. 
Tom  Johnson  with  the  Pennsylvania  conductor,  when  he 
was  trying  to  ride  over  the  Alleghanies  on  the  rear  plat- 
form. The  conductor  called  his  attention  to  the  rules  of 
the  company  forbidding  him  to  stand  on  the  platform. 
Mr.  Johnson,  wishing  to  make  as  good  an  argument 
as  possible,  asked  the  conductor  what  a  platform  was 
made  for,  if  not  to  stand  on.  But  the  conductor  at  once 
overwhelmed  him  with  the  reply,  "  Mr.  Johnson,  you're 
a  politician.  You  should  know  that  a  platform  ain't 
made  to  stand  on.  A  platform's  made  to  get  in  on !" 
There  has  been  one  other  country  and  one  other  age 
in  which  political  parties  have  had  the  same  character 
that  they  have  in  the  United  States  to-day.  That  was 

[126] 


WORKINGS  OF  OUR  POLITICAL  MACHINERY 

in  England  during  the  eighteenth  century.  And  it  is 
a  noticeable  fact  that  the  English  government  in  the 
eighteenth  century  had  this  characteristic  in  common 
with  the  American  government  in  the  nineteenth:  that 
the  executive  and  legislative  branches  of  the  govern- 
ment were  so  far  separated  that  no  means  of  harmo- 
nizing their  action  was  provided  or  allowed  by  the 
Constitution.  Under  such  circumstances  the  English 
parties  at  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century,  like 
the  American  parties  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth,  were 
primarily  occupied  with  keeping  certain  men  in  office, 
and  the  passage  of  legislative  measures  formed  only  a 
very  incidental  element  in  their  plans.  With  this 
striking  parallel  in  view,  we  may  well  believe  that  the 
separation  of  powers  between  the  different  departments 
of  the  government,  and  the  perpetual  threat  of  a  dead- 
lock thereby  produced,  have  as  an  almost  necessary 
consequence  the  dominion  of  the  party  manager:  that 
Walpole  and  Tweed  were  but  different  specimens  of  the 
same  genus;  and  that  their  power,  however  widely 
different  hi  its  methods  of  exercise,  was  an  outgrowth 

of  the  same  cause. 

[127] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

I  have  in  this  lecture  tried  to  survey  the  field  of 
American  politics  and  indicate  the  rules  under  which 
the  game  is  played.  The  next  lecture  will  contain  some 
suggestions  as  to  the  best  way  to  play  it. 


128] 


CHAPTER  V 


THE  POLITICAL  DUTIES  OF  THE  CITIZEN 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  POLITICAL  DUTIES  OF  THE  CITIZEN 

IN  the  early  days  of  the  republic  it  was  expected 
that  every  citizen  would  devote    a   part   of   his 
time  to  political  life.      To    the    man   who  was 
desirous  of  amusement  politics  supplied  an  attractive 
game.     To  him  who  was  anxious  to  do  public  service 
it  furnished  the   best,   and   often  the  only  available 
channel.     To   him   who   was   ambitious   for  tangible 
success  it  offered  the  highest  reward. 

But  as  time  has  gone  on  this  incidental  or  occasional 
practice  of  politics  has  become  very  difficult.  A  man 
cannot  successfully  go  into  public  life  hi  this  indis- 
criminate way.  We  have  grown  older  as  a  nation, 
and  with  increased  age  has  come  increased  specializa- 
tion of  employment.  In  a  boys'  school  everybody  can 
spend  an  hour  a  day  at  baseball,  and  play  it  well  enough 
for  all  practical  purposes.  Twenty  years  later  a  few 

[131] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

of  the  graduates  of  that  school  will  have  gone  into  pro- 
fessional baseball,  and  will  be  giving  all  their  time  to  it ; 
the  rest  will  not  be  playing  it  at  all.  The  conditions 
which  govern  the  practice  of  politics  are  different  in 
many  ways  from  what  they  were  a  hundred  years  ago. 
At  that  time  public  office  furnished  almost  the  only 
reward  of  ambition ;  now  there  are  a  great  many  other 
rewards,  both  commercial  and  professional.  At  that 
time  the  public-spirited  man  found  no  recognized 
channels  of  service  except  those  that  he  followed  by 
going  into  politics ;  now  there  are  opportunities  of  ser- 
vice on  relief  boards,  and  school  boards,  and  a  thousand 
other  kinds  of  boards,  which  have  little  or  no  connec- 
tion with  our  political  organization.  At  that  time  our 
communities  were  so  small  that  each  man  was  pretty 
well  known  to  his  neighbors,  so  that  if  he  ran  for  office, 
they  understood  whom  they  were  voting  for;  now  he 
has  to  spend  so  much  effort  telling  them  about  himself 
in  order  to  stand  any  chance  of  getting  nominated  or 
elected  that  what  was  once  an  amusement  for  the  in- 
tervals of  his  professional  activity  has  become  a  most 
serious  matter  of  business. 

[132] 


THE  POLITICAL  DUTIES  OF  THE  CITIZEN 

I  still  think  that  every  American  citizen  ought  to 
assume  political  responsibilities.  But  as  I  look  at  the 
matter,  there  are  at  least  four  different  ways  in  which 
this  can  be  done;  and  the  obligations  which  go  with 
these  different  ways  of  fulfilling  civic  duty  are  themselves 
widely  different.  One  man  may  desire  to  go  into  poli- 
tics as  a  most  important  part  of  the  business  of  his 
life,  with  the  hope  of  receiving  elective  offices  and 
attaining  a  dominant  position  in  the  counsels  of  his 
party.  Another  may  strive  to  influence  the  conduct  of 
our  public  affairs  indirectly,  by  his  activity  in  behalf  of 
civil  service  reform  and  other  measures  calculated  to 
promote  better  government.  A  third  may  reserve  his 
political  activity  for  special  emergencies,  when  some 
grave  crisis,  national  or  local,  justifies  him  in  an  ex- 
ceptional expenditure  of  time  and  strength.  A  fourth 
may  content  himself  with  that  general  influence  on  the 
conduct  of  political  affairs  which  is  exercised  by  every 
citizen  who  forms  his  moral  judgment  independently 
and  expresses  it  fearlessly.  One  of  these  four  modes 
of  political  influence  each  citizen  should  undertake  to 
exercise;  and,  having  undertaken  it,  he  should  adopt 

[133] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

the  methods  and  ideas  necessary  for  serving  the  com- 
munity in  this  chosen  way.  Of  course  they  are  not 
mutually  exclusive.  A  man  who  has  belonged  to  one 
of  these  classes  may  suddenly  find  himself  transplanted 
into  another,  almost  without  his  own  knowledge.  Some 
grave  crisis  may  cause  the  people  to  select  political 
leaders  on  account  of  proved  business  ability,  or  on 
account  of  the  fearlessness  which  they  have  displayed 
in  some  emergency,  rather  than  through  the  ordinary 
channels  of  party  influence.  But  in  a  general  way  the 
four  lines  of  activity  that  I  have  named  are  tolerably  well 
distinguished  from  one  another. 

Let  us  take  the  duties  of  these  different  classes  in 
order.  First,  what  are  the  conditions  that  surround  the 
man  who  thinks  of  going  into  politics  as  a  profession  ? 

To  begin  with,  he  must  be  prepared  to  take  it  as 
seriously  as  he  would  take  any  other  profession  he  might 
choose.  He  must  accept  it  as  a  continuous  activity. 
He  must  have  the  necessary  time  for  so  doing.  He 
must  be  willing  to  bear  the  disagreeable  features  in- 
cident to  the  work.  People  are  not  going  to  nominate 
and  elect  men  without  knowing  for  what  they  stand, 

[134] 


THE  POLITICAL  DUTIES  OF  THE  CITIZEN 

and  it  takes  time  to  show  for  what  a  candidate  does 
stand.  A  great  many  people  talk  as  though  the  only 
thing  that  a  man  needed  to  do  in  order  to  convince 
people  of  his  character  was  to  make  them  a  speech. 
This  is  not  true.  Speeches  do  not  attract  as  many 
votes  as  is  commonly  supposed,  because  the  people 
shrewdly  suspect  that  a  man  may  not  always  be  telling 
the  truth.  He  may  not  be  what  he  says  he  is.  They 
want  to  vote  for  a  person  who  feels  as  they  feel;  and 
unless  a  man  has  certain  very  peculiar  qualities  of  per- 
sonal magnetism,  his  speeches  give  very  little  impres- 
sion about  his  real  feelings.  Through  newspaper 
articles  a  man  can  reach  the  voters  a  little  better  than 
through  speeches,  because  the  constant  reader  of  a 
newspaper  keeps  hearing  the  same  thing  day  after  day 
until  it  comes  to  dominate  his  thoughts  and  emotions. 
But  even  the  most  adroitly  managed  newspaper  is  a 
very  uncertain  means  of  getting  votes.  I  suppose  that 
the  conduct  of  the  New  York  Journal  in  the  last  cam- 
paign represented  the  maximum  of  effort  in  this  line; 
and  the  effect  of  the  Journal  in  getting  votes  for  Mr. 
Hearst  was  on  the  whole  a  disappointment  to  those 

[  135  ] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

who  had  the  matter  in  charge.     Personal  contact  of 
man  with  man  is  what  attracts  votes  and  gets  offices. 

But  no  man  in  national  politics,  or  even  in  state 
politics,  can  get  into  personal  contact  with  more  than 
a  very  small  proportion  of  the  voters  whom  he  wishes 
to  influence.  Here  is  where  the  great  importance  of  the 
party  machinery  comes  in.  The  party  is  a  sort  of 
hierarchy,  where  each  of  the  rank  and  file  is  looked 
after  by  the  local  leader ;  and  the  local  leaders  in  turn 
are  influenced  by  leaders  of  higher  grade,  until  you  come 
to  the  great  central  committee  which  dominates  the 
whole.  This  is,  I  think,  a  characteristic  which  all 
efficient  American  party  organizations  have  in  com- 
mon. There  are  different  ways  of  looking  after  men, 
which  range  all  the  way  in  merit  from  education  to 
corruption.  But  the  element  of  personal  contact  is 
present  in  every  case  where  anything  effective  gets  done. 
It  is  customary  to  talk  as  though  these  party  machines 
furnished  opportunities  to  the  bad  man  only.  I  am 
inclined  to  think  that  they  furnish  equal  opportunities 
to  the  good  man,  provided  he  is  one  who  is  ready  to  get 
acquainted  with  people  and  find  out  what  they  actually 

[136] 


THE  POLITICAL  DUTIES  OF  THE  CITIZEN 

want:  one  who  does  not  regard  this  sort  of  personal 
contact  as  a  derogation  to  his  dignity.  Of  course  he 
will  find  corrupt  men  in  the  party  councils,  as  he  will 
in  every  other  walk  of  life.  He  will  find  systems  of 
ethics  which  are  always  crude,  and  standards  of  morals 
which  are  sometimes  low.  So  he  will  in  law  or  hi  medi- 
cine, or  even  in  theology.  A  man  who  is  squeamish 
about  associates  should  not  go  into  politics,  any  more 
than  a  man  who  is  squeamish  about  dogmas  should 
go  into  the  Church,  or  than  a  man  who  is  squeamish 
about  bargaining  should  go  into  certain  lines  of  business. 
But  if  his  natural  tastes  fit  him  for  political  life,  he  will 
find  himself  morally  about  as  well  off  here  as  he  could  be 
anywhere  else.  He  will  have  a  fair  chance  to  fight  for 
his  convictions,  and  an  opportunity  to  make  all  his 
powers  tell  most  effectively.  If  a  man  can  acquire 
weight  in  the  councils  of  a  political  party  it  is  an  in- 
valuable asset,  not  only  for  him  personally,  but  for  the 
cause  of  good  government  in  general. 

It  is  an  asset  which  should  not  be  lightly  thrown 
away.  The  man  who  is  in  politics  professionally  has 
a  right,  and  even  a  duty,  to  sacrifice  much  in  order  to 

[137] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

preserve  his  influence  with  the  party  organization. 
Some  people  talk  as  though  it  were  just  as  easy  for  a 
political  leader  to  be  independent  as  it  is  for  the  simple 
voter.  They  think  that,  with  slight  differences,  what  is 
good  ethics  for  the  voter  is  good  ethics  for  the  politician. 
With  this  judgment  I  cannot  concur.  The  ordinary 
voter,  by  making  himself  independent  of  party,  compels 
the  different  parties  to  bid  for  his  vote,  and  he  does 
not  forfeit  any  means  of  influence  which  he  previously 
possessed.  The  utmost  that  he  can  lose  will  be  the 
right  to  go  to  the  caucus  of  the  party  that  he  has  aban- 
doned. But  the  politician  who  breaks  with  his  party 
throws  aside  a  power  of  reaching  men  and  persuading 
them  which  control  of  party  machinery  gives,  without 
acquiring  any  similar  influence  in  the  other  party. 
In  fact,  any  such  defection  on  his  part  may  lessen  the 
strength  of  the  better  element  in  the  organization  op- 
posed to  him.  It  may  be  that  the  presence  of  a  good 
man  in  the  republican  machine  will  strengthen  the  hands 
of  the  good  men  in  the  democratic  machine,  by  compel- 
ling the  democratic  party  leaders  to  adopt  a  higher 

standard  of  conduct  than  they  would  otherwise  have 

[138] 


THE  POLITICAL  DUTIES  OF  THE  CITIZEN 

done.  It  is  not  his  chance  of  office  alone,  but  his 
chance  of  influencing  his  associates  and  setting  a  mark 
for  his  opponents,  that  the  politician  throws  aside  when 
he  deserts  his  party.  Therefore,  if  a  man's  record 
shows  that  he  has  been  honestly  anxious  to  do  public 
service,  I  am  very  slow  to  criticise  him  for  standing  by 
his  organization  through  a  good  deal  that  is  rather  bad. 
But  if  he  is  to  retain  his  self-respect  and  the  respect 
of  his  associates,  the  possibility  of  doing  public  good 
must  be  clearly  the  dominant  motive.  This  is  why 
certain  classes  of  people  have  to  keep  out  of  politics  as 
a  business.  Members  of  the  civil  service,  for  instance. 
A  man  who  is  employed  by  the  people  at  a  salary,  for 
non-political  work,  will  if  he  goes  into  politics  always 
be  under  considerable  suspicion  as  to  his  motives. 
Nor  can  a  man  safely  make  politics  his  occupation 
unless  he  has  some  independent  means  of  support  to 
fall  back  upon,  if  he  has  to  break  with  his  party.  He 
has  no  right  to  put  himself  in  a  position  where  he  may 
have  to  choose  between  starvation  for  his  family  or 
disservice  to  his  country.  I  do  not  mean  that  every 
man  who  goes  into  politics  ought  to  be  independently 

[139] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

rich  (though  the  independently  rich  man  does  have 
certain  very  great  advantages  in  leading  a  fight  for 
clean  politics) ;  but  that  in  default  of  wealth  he  ought 
to  have  had  such  training  in  law  or  journalism,  or  some 
other  profession  which  he  can  readily  resume,  as  to  give 
him  a  tangible  alternative  to  fall  back  upon  if  political 
preferment  may  only  be  had  at  the  sacrifice  of  his  honor. 
Otherwise  neither  he  nor  those  about  him  can  be  sure 
that  the  public  motive  is  really  the  dominant  one  when 
he  stands  by  the  party.  If  he  has  not  this  advantage, 
and  yet  is  anxious  to  do  all  the  political  service  he  can, 
he  is  far  better  off  in  our  second  group  than  in  the  first. 
This  second  group  consists  of  those  who  aim  to  pro- 
mote good  government,  not  by  taking  political  office 
themselves,  but  by  insuring  the  passage  and  enforce- 
ment of  measures  that  will  raise  the  general  character 
of  our  politics  as  a  whole.  Any  man  who  undertakes 
this  has  plenty  of  hard  work  before  him;  but  he  does 
not  need  to  abandon  his  regular  profession,  nor  to 
identify  himself  very  closely  with  any  one  party.  If 
he  can  suggest  a  law  which  seems  likely  to  produce 
better  government,  he  does  not  have  to  have  party 

[140] 


THE  POLITICAL  DUTIES  OF  THE  CITIZEN 

backing  in  order  to  get  a  hearing.  Reform  measures 
often  find  support  in  very  surprising  quarters.  Many 
a  politician  who  himself  uses  bad  methods  will  en- 
courage the  passage,  and  even  the  enforcement,  of  laws 
to  prevent  the  use  of  those  methods  in  the  future.  The 
reason  for  this  paradox  is  not  hard  to  find.  Almost 
every  man  who  goes  into  politics  is  anxious  to  leave 
behind  him  as  good  a  record  as  he  can.  As  he  gets 
higher  and  higher  up,  he  sees  that  the  things  that  he 
has  used  to  help  himself  are  regarded  by  many  people  as 
hurtful  to  the  country.  He  does  not  feel  strong  enough 
to  dispense  with  these  means,  while  his  opponents  in 
the  party  or  outside  of  it  continue  to  use  them,  because 
it  would  cost  him  a  continuance  of  his  power.  But 
he  often  believes  that  the  passage  of  a  general  law  which 
takes  that  means  out  of  his  hands  and  his  opponents' 
alike  will  leave  him  a  good  chance  to  retain  power  and 
at  the  same  time  identify  him  and  his  party  with  an 
important  measure  of  public  service.  I  do  not  mean  that 
all  politicians  will  think  or  act  in  this  way;  but  there 
will  be  enough  of  them  who  think  and  act  in  this  way 
to  give  unexpected  help  to  the  advocate  of  clean  politics. 

[141] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

The  laws  of  this  kind  which  we  ought  to  have  can  be 
divided  into  three  classes :  laws  to  prevent  corruption, 
laws  to  fix  responsibility,  and  laws  to  promote  inde- 
pendent voting. 

In  the  first  class  the  best  example  is  the  civil  service 
law.  Many  who  read  these  words  can  remember  a 
time  when  nearly  the  whole  salary  list  of  the  govern- 
ment was  regarded  as  the  prey  of  spoilsmen  in  the  game 
of  politics.  The  efforts  of  disinterested  men,  of  differ- 
ent parties,  and  some  of  them  without  definite  party 
affiliations  of  any  kind,  made  people  see  that  this  sys- 
tem was  bad  both  for  the  efficiency  of  the  public  service 
and  for  the  cleanness  of  political  life  as  a  whole.  Another 
set  of  laws  to  take  away  the  chance  for  corruption,  not 
so  old  nor  so  well  worked  out  as  the  civil  service  law  but 
accepted  in  principle  by  most  of  our  states,  is  exempli- 
fied by  the  secret  ballot  acts,  which  make  it  unsafe 
for  a  man  to  buy  votes  because  he  never  can  be  quite 
sure  that  the  goods  will  be  delivered.  There  are  other 
statutory  means  of  preventing  corruption,  like  laws  pro- 
viding for  the  publicity  of  campaign  accounts,  which 

have  hardly  passed  beyond  the  experimental  stage. 

[142] 


THE  POLITICAL  DUTIES  OF  THE  CITIZEN 

Of  laws  to  fix  responsibility,  the  best  examples  are 
seen  in  some  of  our  newer  city  charters.  Under  the 
old  system,  where  a  mayor  was  surrounded  by  a  board 
of  aldermen  which  had  large  veto  powers  and  large 
rights  in  sanctioning  appointments  to  municipal  office, 
no  one  could  ever  tell  who  was  to  blame  for  waste  and 
inefficiency.  The  mayor  could  not  give  a  good  gov- 
ernment if  he  tried,  and  therefore  could  not  be  held 
responsible  if  his  government  was  bad.  The  aldermen 
considered  themselves  accountable  only  to  their  sup- 
porters and  friends  in  their  several  districts;  and  if 
the  interest  of  the  whole  community  suffered,  they  dis- 
claimed responsibility  for  the  general  result.  By  giving 
independent  powers  to  one  man,  so  that  he  could  be 
praised  for  good  work  and  blamed  for  bad  work,  it  was 
found,  not  that  he  abused  his  powers,  but  that  he  sought 
the  credit  which  resulted  from  exercising  them  as  well 
as  he  knew  how.  I  do  not  mean  that  we  have  yet  found 
the  ideal  form  of  city  charter.  A  great  deal  of  public 
spirit  and  disinterested  service  on  the  part  of  the  citizens 
is  requisite  in  order  to  run  an  American  city  under  any 
charter,  however  good.  But  we  have  in  many  places 

[143] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

removed  the  worst  features  of  a  system  that  prevailed 
thirty  years  ago,  which  put  a  positive  premium  on  cor- 
ruption and  prevented  anybody,  however  good  or  dis- 
interested, from  rendering  the  service  which  he  wanted 
to. 

A  law  separating  the  time  of  local  and  national  elec- 
tions is  a  good  example  of  the  kind  of  measure  which 
will  promote  independent  voting.  In  municipal  affairs, 
except  perhaps  in  cities  of  the  very  largest  size,  there 
is  not  the  same  need  of  parties  that  there  is  in  national 
affairs.  Each  citizen  is  interested  to  have  the  city's 
business  well  done ;  each  citizen  ought  to  know  tolerably 
well  the  business  capacity  and  character  of  men  who 
are  prominent  enough  to  become  candidates  for  mu- 
nicipal office.  But  if  the  municipal  election  is  placed 
at  the  same  time  as  the  national  election,  the  inevitable 
tendency  is  to  make  nominations  a  party  matter  and 
to  let  the  man's  vote  for  municipal  candidates  be  a  good 
deal  influenced  by  his  preferences  on  the  national  ticket. 
If  the  local  election  can  be  put  at  an  entirely  different 
time  from  the  national  one,  the  chance  for  an  indepen- 
dent ticket  is  infinitely  greater;  and  if  in  addition  we 

[144] 


THE  POLITICAL  DUTIES  OF  THE  CITIZEN 

can  devise  what  is  known  as  a  direct  primary  law,  in 
which  every  voter  belonging  to  a  given  party  shall  have 
a  fair  and  equal  chance  to  say  who  shall  be  nominated, 
instead  of  being  compelled  to  work  through  a  system 
of  caucuses  which  gives  every  advantage  to  the  pro- 
fessional politician,  we  increase  the  probability  of 
getting  businesslike  nominations  from  the  parties  them- 
selves. The  problem  of  direct  primaries  is  not  one 
which  has  been  fully  worked  out ;  and  I  may  perhaps 
be  unduly  prejudiced  in  favor  of  the  reform  because  I 
happen  to  have  seen  especially  good  instances  of  its 
operation.  But  I  do  not  know  any  field  of  effort  which 
is  more  promising  for  a  man  who  wants  to  do  political 
service,  and  who  has  not  the  time  or  inclination  to  go 
into  politics,  than  the  development  of  the  direct  primary, 
or  of  some  similar  means  which  will  give  the  average 
voter  the  best  chance  of  expressing  his  views  before 
the  nomination. 

It  has  been  found  much  harder  to  separate  state 

issues  from  national  ones.     The  state  is  so  large  that 

people  cannot  know  a  man's  probable  fitness  to  be 

governor  as  they  can  know  his  probable  fitness  to  be 

L  [ 145  ] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

mayor.  But  I  believe  that  we  ought  to  try  to  do  for 
our  states  what  we  have  done  for  our  cities,  by  removing 
all  artificial  attempts  to  tie  local  and  national  issues 
together.  This  is  why  I  favor  direct  election  of  United 
States  senators  by  the  people.  It  is  not  because  we 
send  specially  bad  men  to  Washington  under  the  present 
system.  It  is  not  because  of  the  effect  of  the  present 
system  on  the  character  and  composition  of  the  senate. 
It  is  because  of  the  effect  of  the  present  system  on  the 
character  and  composition  of  the  state  legislatures. 
A  man  is  sent  to  the  state  capital  to  make  some  laws 
for  the  people  of  his  state;  and  he  finds  that  his  first 
duty  —  in  some  sessions  almost  his  only  duty  —  is 
to  elect  a  United  States  senator.  A  more  direct  means 
of  preventing  the  elector  from  getting  the  kind  of  local 
laws  which  he  wants  could  not  possibly  be  devised. 
He  is  in  a  large  number  of  cases  compelled  to  vote 
either  for  a  representative  who  will  make  the  kind  of 
laws  he  wants  for  the  state  but  will  send  the  wrong  man 
to  the  United  States  Senate,  or  for  one  who  will  make 
the  kind  of  laws  he  does  not  want  for  the  state  but  will 
send  the  right  man  to  the  United  States  Senate.  He 

[146] 


THE  POLITICAL  DUTIES  OF  THE  CITIZEN 

generally  chooses  the  latter;    and  that  is  one  of  the 
reasons  why  the  politics  of  many  of  our  states  are  so  , 
bad.     People  are  not  allowed  to  elect  state  officers  on 
the  basis  of  state  issues. 

It  is  hardly  worth  while  to  multiply  instances  of 
statutory  changes  which  would  promote  cleaner  politics. 
While  we  cannot  make  men  good  by  Act  of  Congress 
or  General  Assembly,  we  can  make  it  either  a  great  deal 
easier  or  a  great  deal  harder  for  a  good  man  to  do  what 
he  wants.  The  man  who  succeeds  in  making  it  easier 
does  just  as  much  public  service  and  has  just  as  honor- 
able a  political  career  as  if  he  had  himself  taken  office 
or  been  identified  with  the  actual  government  of  the 
country.  And  of  equal  importance  with  the  work 
of  the  man  who  secures  the  passage  of  new  laws  of  the 
right  sort  is  that  of  the  man  who  helps  systematically 
toward  the  better  enforcement  and  more  intelligent 
administration  of  the  laws  which  we  have  already. 
The  work  of  a  man  like  Judge  Lindsey  in  the  Juvenile 
Court  of  Denver  is  in  no  sense  political;  but  it  would 
be  hard  to  find  any  one  in  the  whole  country  whose 
professional  career  has  had  more  to  do  with  the  improve- 
[147] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

ment  of  politics  and  of  government  than  has  Judge 
Lindsey  through  the  effects,  direct  and  indirect,  of  his 
Juvenile  Court. 

The  duty  of  the  third  class  that  I  have  named  — 
the  men  who  feel  that  they  can  take  up  politics  only  in 
grave  emergencies  —  requires  very  little  comment. 
A  nation,  like  an  army,  needs  a  strong  reserve;  and  if 
a  man  cannot  be  in  the  front  rank  all  the  time,  he  does 
good  work  by  accomplishing  all  he  can  when  the  reserves 
are  called  out.  A  man  in|  such  a  position  has  this 
special  advantage,  that,  not  being  bound  by  party 
affiliations,  he  is  freer  to  make  his  choice,  and  to  let 
people  see  that  it  is  an  unbiassed  choice,  in  times  when 
party  lines  have  broken  up.  For  leadership  in  a  tre- 
mendous uprising  of  the  whole  people,  it  is  sometimes 
an  advantage  not  to  have  been  habitually  regarded 
as  the  representative  of  a  particular  party.  And  even 
when  such  a  leader  is  turned  out  of  office,  as  he  is 
likely  to  be  before  very  long,  he  can  have  the  satis- 
faction of  thinking  that  he  has  left  behind  him  a  larger 
sum  of  permanent  results  than  his  followers  in  the  first 
flush  of  their  disappointment  are  willing  to  see.  No 

[148] 


THE  POLITICAL  DUTIES  OF  THE  CITIZEN 

city  which  has  become  thoroughly  reformed,  even  for 
a  brief  time,  ever  gets  back  to  practices  quite  as  bad  as 
those  which  it  once  had.  The  forces  that  overthrew 
Tweed  in  New  York  had  a  comparatively  brief  period 
of  success;  but  no  body  of  New  York  officeholders 
has  ever  again  dared  to  do  the  things  that  Tweed  and 
his  friends  did,  or  anything  like  them.  The  reformers 
who  obtained  control  of  many  of  our  cities  a  year  or 
two  ago  are  inclined  to  be  discouraged  at  the  reaction 
which  seems  to  be  taking  the  fruits  of  victory  out  of 
their  hands.  But  that  reaction,  at  its  worst,  is  not  likely 
to  carry  people  back  to  the  point  where  they  were  when 
the  reform  movement  started. 

We  are  in  perpetual  danger  of  overestimating  the 
power  of  a  great  moral  uprising  to  change  the  face  of 
our  politics,  and  of  being  unduly  disappointed  because 
these  impossible  hopes  do  not  turn  out  realities.  It 
seems  to  most  people  as  if  a  great  wave  of  public  senti- 
ment, which  unites  the  good  and  even  the  indifferently 
good  of  all  classes  and  parties,  ought  of  itself  to  estab- 
lish a  permanent  government  too  strong  to  be  over- 
thrown by  politicians.  It  seems  as  though  the  public 

[149] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

interests  in  favor  of  such  a  movement  were  so  large, 
and  the  private  interests  opposed  to  it  so  small,  that 
the  contest  between  the  two  could  be  left  to  take  care 
of  itself.  But  we  all  know  the  comment  of  the  man 
who,  when  he  was  told  that  God  was  stronger  than  the 
devil,  objected  that  the  devil  made  up  for  his  inferior 
strength  by  his  superior  activity.  We  can  hardly  ex- 
pect the  leaders  of  a  reform  movement,  who  go  into  the 
work  at  the  sacrifice  of  their  regular  business,  to 
maintain  year  after  year  the  continued  activity  which 
is  characteristic  of  the  successful  politician.  Still  less 
can  we  expect  it  of  their  followers.  A  thousand  details 
which  an  organized  party  machine  would  look  after 
are  left  unheeded.  Want  of  attention  to  these  details 
alienates  some  supporters  of  the  movement,  and  sets 
others  at  cross  purposes.  The  underlying  principles 
on  which  the  reformers  started  remain  as  impor- 
tant as  ever;  but  the  mismanagement  of  the  details 
distracts  attention  from  these  principles  until  people 
are  willing  to  sacrifice  some  of  them  for  the  sake  of 
having  the  government  more  smoothly  run.  "Will 
he  not  fail  me  in  a  great  moral  crisis  ?  "  asks  the  heroine 

[150] 


THE  POLITICAL  DUTIES  OF  THE  CITIZEN 

in  a  recent  story  of  her  married  sister,  who  is  urging 
her  to  accept  a  match  which  seems  somewhat  advan- 
tageous. And  the  reply  is,  "  I  cannot  say ;  but  he  has 
good  manners  at  his  meals.  I  do  not  think  we  have  ever 
had  a  great  moral  crisis  in  our  family;  and  you  have 
to  eat  meals  three  times  a  day."  There  always  will 
be  some  idealists  in  politics  to  whom  the  possibility 
of  a  great  moral  crisis  is  more  important  than  the  meals 
three  times  a  day.  These  men  are  to  be  encouraged. 
We  are  never  likely  to  have  too  many  of  them.  But 
they  will  not  generally  get  elected  to  office.  Most  of 
the  time  their  work  will  be  that  of  critics.  Only  in 
emergencies  will  they  be  called  upon  for  constructive 
leadership;  but  what  they  can  do  then  makes  up  for 
all  their  disappointments  and  failures  at  other  times. 

There  is  apt  to  be  a  misunderstanding,  and  a  most 
unwise  misunderstanding,  between  the  emergency 
worker  and  the  man  regularly  connected  with  politics. 
The  former  regards  the  latter  as  hidebound.  The 
latter  regards  the  former  as  unpractical.  But  each 
is  necessary  in  the  fight  for  clean  politics;  and  I  may 
add  that  each  is  necessary  for  the  usefulness  of  the  other. 

[151] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

A  friend  of  mine  said  to  me,  not  so  very  long  ago :  "  I 
know  President  Roosevelt  so  well  that  I  can  tell  him 
the  truth;  and  I  say  to  him,  'The  trouble  with  you  is 
that  you  are  narrow-minded.  You  don't  like  the  New 
York  Evening  Post.  You  don't  see  that  the  Evening 
Post  is  necessary  to  make  people  accept  you  as  the  less 
of  two  evils.' " 

And  now  we  come  to  our  fourth  group,  which  after 
all  must  be  the  largest  influence  in  the  politics  of  the 
country  —  the  people  who  do  not  aspire  to  leadership, 
regular  or  even  occasional,  but  whose  votes  and  opinions 
and  moral  judgments  make  the  country  what  it  is. 
What  obligation  should  be  emphasized  in  their  code 
of  political  ethics  ?  What  can  they  do  for  good  public 
morals  ? 

First,  they  can  vote  independently.  The  reasons 
which  prevent  the  politician  from  always  speaking 
his  mind  on  a  doubtful  issue  do  not  apply  in  the  case 
of  the  ordinary  citizen.  He  is  bound  by  no  set  of  obli- 
gations to  the  party  with  which  he  may  have  been  asso- 
ciated. He  has  no  highly  organized  influence,  built  up 

through  a  series  of  years,  which  he  casts  aside  by  break- 

[152] 


THE  POLITICAL  DUTIES  OF  THE  CITIZEN 

ing  over  party  lines.  I  do  not  mean  that  the  voter 
should  try  to  defeat  a  party  with  whose  aims  he  is  in 
general  sympathy,  merely  because  of  one  man  whom  he 
dislikes  or  one  measure  which  he  disapproves.  He  must 
consider  carefully  the  arguments  which  can  be  urged  on 
both  sides.  But  having  taken  those  arguments  into 
consideration,  he  ought  to  be  guided  by  his  reason  and 
not  by  his  inertia.  Parties  are  likely  to  be  so  nearly 
even  in  numbers  that  many  elections  will  be  decided 
by  two  comparatively  small  groups  of  men :  the  corrupt 
and  the  intelligent.  If  the  intelligent  men  stand  by  their 
party  instead  of  voting  independently,  it  will  be  more 
desirable  for  the  party  leaders  to  appeal  to  the  corrupt 
vote  by  lowering  the  standards  of  their  platforms  and 
promises  than  to  appeal  to  the  intelligent  vote  by 
raising  the  standard  of  those  platforms  and  promises. 
But  if  the  intelligent  men  are  also  independent,  the 
chances  are  that  it  will  be  more  necessary  to  bid  for 
the  intelligent  vote  than  for  the  corrupt  vote.  The 
leaders  will  have  every  incentive  to  do  better  instead 
of  doing  worse.  The  man  who,  having  sense  enough 
to  find  out  what  is  right,  does  not  take  the  trouble  to 

[153] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

do  it,  or  does  not  have  the  courage  to  act  on  his  con- 
victions, is  throwing  away  an  influence  which  is  ab- 
solutely necessary  for  the  promotion  of  good  politics. 

But  the  American  citizen  has  a  yet  broader  duty 
than  this.  It  is  not  enough  to  vote  rightly  on  certain 
specific  issues,  or  to  enforce  right  ideas  on  certain  spe- 
cific questions  of  politics  and  morals.  We  must  get  our 
minds  themselves  into  a  judicial  attitude.  Under  the 
American  Constitution  the  people  of  our  country  are  en- 
couraged to  judge  of  facts,  to  take  charge  of  the  enforce- 
ment of  the  law,  and  to  select  leaders  of  the  kind  that  they 
admire.  The  final  test  of  our  ability  as  a  nation  rests 
on  the  power  of  our  people  to  judge  of  evidence  quietly ; 
to  accept  the  operations  of  law,  even  when  it  works 
to  their  own  hurt;  to  get  ideals  of  success  of  the  kind 
that  will  preserve  the  nation  instead  of  those  which  will 
destroy  it.  Every  man  who  publishes  a  newspaper 
which  appeals  to  the  emotions  rather  than  to  the  intel- 
ligence of  its  readers,  and  to  a  less  extent  every  man  who 
lightly  believes  the  statements  that  he  finds  in  such  a 
newspaper,  attacks  our  political  life  at  a  most  vul- 
nerable point.  Every  man,  whether  a  member  of  the 

[154] 


THE  POLITICAL  DUTIES  OF  THE  CITIZEN 

majority  or  of  the  minority,  who  regards  the  law  as  an 
enactment  to  promote  one  set  of  private  institutions 
at  the  expense  of  another,  or  who  cooperates  in  the 
passage  and  administration  of  laws  in  this  spirit, 
makes  himself  responsible  for  the  dangers  of  growing 
contempt  of  law.  Every  man  who  admires  a  public 
officer  for  success  in  serving  himself  rather  than  for  suc- 
cess in  serving  others  —  who  respects  the  man  for  getting 
the  office  rather  than  for  deserving  the  office  —  shows 
himself  to  that  extent  unfit  to  be  a  member  of  a  self- 
governing  nation,  and  by  influence  and  example  di- 
minishes the  capacity  of  the  nation  as  a  whole  for  self- 
government.  These  are  the  fundamental  points  of 
political  ethics  —  these  the  fundamental  issues  in  all 
questions  of  public  morals. 

For  the  great  political  question  before  us  is  not  whether 
this  or  that  party  shall  be  kept  in  power,  or  whether 
one  law  or  another  shall  be  passed.  The  question  is 
rather  whether  our  present  system  of  government 
shall  stand.  The  history  of  the  world  shows  that  free- 
dom is  a  very  precarious  possession,  which  a  nation 
cannot  continue  to  enjoy  for  many  centuries  unless 

[155] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

it  uses  it  with  exceptional  wisdom.  If  people  will 
employ  liberty  as  a  means  of  substituting  self-control 
for  external  control,  they  can  continue  to  have  it.  If 
they  try  to  make  it  a  pretext  for  getting  rid  of  all  control 
except  that  which  is  furnished  by  their  own  desires 
and  whims  and  wishes,  it  is  taken  away  by  force  of 
circumstances.  The  Athenian  democracy,  when  it 
was  composed  of  men  trained  in  the  habits  of  self- 
command,  furnished  a  magnificent  instance  of  what 
freedom  can  do  in  government  and  in  morals,  in  art 
and  in  literature.  But  the  children  and  grandchildren 
of  the  men  who  made  Athens  great  could  not  endure 
the  discipline  which  their  fathers  voluntarily  accepted. 
By  defiance  of  the  law  and  by  the  pursuit  of  individual 
selfishness  they  brought  the  state  to  its  fall.  The  Roman 
freedom  lasted  longer  than  the  Athenian,  because  the 
Romans  had  been  trained  in  a  sterner  discipline,  and 
had  a  respect  for  law  which  stood  them  in  good  stead 
for  generations.  But  when  freedom  became  a  pretext 
for  selfishness,  Rome  in  its  turn  fell,  first  under  the 
tyranny  of  the  emperors,  and  later  under  the  yoke  of 
the  barbarian. 

[156] 


THE  POLITICAL  DUTIES  OF  THE  CITIZEN 

I  am  no  pessimist.  I  do  not  see  anything  which 
warrants  the  fear  that  we  shall  repeat  in  the  near  future 
the  experience  of  Athens  or  Rome  —  unless  it  be  the 
mistaken  complacency  of  those  optimists  who  think 
that  we  can  repeat  the  mistakes  of  Athens  and  Rome 
without  incurring  the  penalties.  But  the  danger  is 
great  enough  to  make  it  worth  while  to  impress  upon 
every  citizen  the  duty  of  inculcating  respect  for  law,  even 
when  that  law  hurts  him.  It  is  the  underlying  spirit 
of  philosophical  selfishness  which  is  the  chief  element 
of  danger  —  the  theory  that  if  each  man  does  what  he 
really  wants  to  do,  things  will  all  go  well.  Every  nation 
that  has  accepted  this  philosophy  has  begun  to  ride 
to  its  own  destruction.  I  do  not  know  what  is  the  solu- 
tion of  the  divorce  problem.  I  wish  I  did.  But  I  do 
know  that  the  worst  thing  about  divorce  at  present 
is  that  so  many  people  regard  marriage  as  a  thing  to  be 
made  and  unmade  for  purely  selfish  reasons ;  and  when 
this  conception  fully  takes  root,  the  days  of  a  nation  are 
numbered.  I  do  not  know  what  is  the  means  of  doing 
away  with  lynch  law.  I  wish  I  did.  But  I  do  know 
that  the  most  serious  aspect  of  all  the  lynchings  of  which 

[157] 


STANDARDS  OF  PUBLIC  MORALITY 

we  hear,  North  or  South,  is  the  evidence  of  weakened 
authority  of  legal  procedure,  when  brought  face  to  face 
with  the  preconceptions  and  passions  of  the  crowd. 
When  any  nation  looks  upon  law  as  a  thing  which  the 
individual  may  use  when  it  suits  him  and  evade  or 
defy  when  it  does  not  suit  him,  that  nation  is  losing  the 
main  bulwarks  of  social  order.  To  any  man,  whatever 
his  position  in  the  state,  it  has  become  the  paramount 
political  duty  to  defend  the  sacredness  of  law,  not  only 
against  the  active  assaults  which  threaten  to  overthrow 
it,  but  against  the  more  subtle  and  dangerous  attacks 
of  a  selfish  philosophy  which  works  to  undermine  it. 
He  must  regard,  and  must  persuade  others  to  regard, 
liberty  and  the  privileges  which  go  with  it  as  trusts 
to  be  used  only  in  the  public  interest,  and  in  behalf 
of  the  nation  as  a  whole. 


[158] 


'HE  following  pages  contain  advertisements  of  a 
few  of  the  Macmillan  books  on  kindred  subjects 


American  Social 
Progress  Series 


Edited  by  SAMUEL  McCUNE  LINDSAY 

Professor  of  Social  Science  in  Columbia  University 


The  American  Social  Progress  Series  is  designed  to  fur- 
nish the  increasing  number  of  students  of  our  concrete 
American  social  life,  especially  in  its  manifestation  in  social 
problems  that  have  arisen  in  the  larger  cities  of  the  United 
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material  of  recent  scientific  investigations.  Some  of  the 
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tion of  the  facts  relating  to  special  problems  as  we  have 
recorded  for  English  conditions  in  the  works  of  Mr.  Charles 
Booth,  Mr.  Rowntree,  and  others.  Brevity  of  statement 
and  conciseness  of  treatment  will  be  maintained  so  that 
these  handbooks  may  be  serviceable  for  collateral  reading 
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the  social  problems  of  our  own  time. 


THE    MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

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THE  AMERICAN  SOCIAL  PROGRESS  SERIES 


The  New  Basis  of  Civilization 

By  SIMON   N.   PATTEN,   Ph.D.,  LL.D. 

Professor  of  Political  Economy,  Wharton  School  of  Finance  and 
Commerce,  University  of  Pennsylvania 

Cloth,  ismo,  $1.00  net;  by  mail,  $1.10 

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Standards  of  Public  Morality 

By  ARTHUR  TWINING  HADLEY,  Ph.D.,  LL.D. 

President  of  Yale  University 

Just  ready,  $1.00  net;  by  mail,  $1.10 

Legislation  and  Administration 
for  Social  Welfare 

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Cornell  University 

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